33% of the active population or 5 million Uzbeks have at least one loan, the Central Bank said in a report Thursday.
As of June 1, 2025, the ratio of individuals who have taken loans from banks continues to grow, while the ratio of borrowers with two or more loans is skyrocketing.
To date, 1.4 million borrowers (27% of the total) are servicing two or more loans, while 16% have two loans.
At the beginning of 2020, the ratio of borrowers who had more than three loans was only 3%. Now the ratio of people with three or more loans rose to 11%.
Meanwhile, the percentage of people with one loan dropped from 84% to 73%.
The finance blogger Otabek Bakirov believes that over the past two years, due to the “banks’ extremely aggressive credit policy,” consumers have begun to take new loans on top of existing debt more often.
"The problem is that this ratio is actually even higher, since the Central Bank’s report does not reflect individuals' debts to microfinance firms, pawnshops, and BNPLs. It would be useful if the regulator also disclosed a picture of what products or services these second, third, and subsequent loans are taken for," he wrote.
In his opinion, in recent years, a group of people has emerged and is growing in Uzbekistan who are paying off old debts by taking out new loans.
Bakirov called the situation dangerous when expensive credit products are issued to individuals without official income. The lack of quantitative restrictions on loan amounts above the requested level further worsens the situation of compatriots who are not ready for financial risks and become easy prey for fraudsters, he believes.
Earlier, the Central Bank reported that despite the tightening of loan requirements, the debt burden of Uzbeks remains high. In the car loan segment, the situation has improved, but the risks for microloans have increased. An increase in the number of borrowers with multiple loans may increase the risk of "contagion" between banks.
In 2024, the average debt burden, taking into account all obligations, increased slightly and topped 34%. That is, individuals of Uzbekistan spent more than a third of their income on servicing all debts, including payments on loans from banks, microloans and other obligations. For example, if a person earns 3 million soums per month, then he spends 1.02 million soums to repay loans.
