The Innoprom. Central Asia international industrial exhibition took place from April 22 to 24. The Russian exhibition site Innoprom first landed in Tashkent in 2021 - for the first time outside of Yekaterinburg, where this forum is traditionally held. Since 2022, the event has been held in the “Innoprom. Central Asia”, Last year the exhibition was visited by more than 10 thousand delegates from 35 countries of CiS, Europe and Asia.
This year, the organizers were the Ministry of Investment, Industry and Trade of Uzbekistan and the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation. The three-day exposition on five pavilions of the Uzexpocenter featured about 450 companies and business delegations from 27 countries. For the first time, participants from China joined - 15 regions of the Russian Federation, as well as delegations from the CIS and Eurasian countries.
On the opening day, the Uzbekistan outlined important trends for itself, which it planned to be discussed at the Innoprom site. At the main plenary session, Deputy Prime Minister Jamshid Khojaev announced wide opportunities for preferential export of products produced jointly with foreign companies to the markets of third countries.
“In the interests of our countries, we will continue to support joint business projects, as well as create all the necessary conditions for our partners and investors,” noted Zhamshid Khojaev. He clarified that we are talking about industrial projects in the metallurgy, energy, petrochemical, electrical, and textile pharmaceutical industries.
The Deputy Prime Minister offered Russian retailers the supply of household appliances assembled in Uzbekistan with partners from Korea and China, futures contracts for textile products, as well as investing in agricultural projects.
Zhamshid Khojaev noted that the exhibition “Innoprom. Central Asia" had become a traditional and landmark event in cooperation not only between Uzbek and Russian enterprises, but also in the Central Asian region as a whole.
For Russian business, the sanctions pressure from the West is forcing them to look for new sites for localizing their products. According to Deputy Prime Minister and Head of the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation Denis Manturov, there are currently 24 thousand Russia-invested companies in Central Asian countries, with the estimated aggregate volume of investments at 38 billion US dollars.
“We see the main prospects for those who are already involved in foreign economic activity in the joint development of higher processing stages in basic industries. And also in organizing the production of the most popular components for various segments of mechanical engineering,” explained Denis Manturov, speaking at the plenary session of the exhibition.
The Russian authorities also proposed to develop high-tech cooperation of small businesses on the basis of industrial zones both in Russia and Uzbekistan. “The experience of the Chirchik and Jizzakh technology parks, which we created with our Uzbek colleagues, is the main confirmation of this,” said the Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation.
The geopolitical backdrop makes serious adjustments to the rosy plans of such large-scale cooperation. For example, over the past two years, Russian automakers, who lost supplies of components from Western partners due to sanctions, regularly announced plans for such localization in Uzbekistan at Innoprom. However, this year there has been a noticeable decrease in conversations on this topic.
Thus, the Ulyanovsk Automobile Plant (UAZ) took a “pause” for a year and a half in plans to implement a project to launch car assembly in the Chirchik technology park in the Tashkent region. As a source familiar with the situation explained to Gazeta.uz, while the process of replacing components of Russian cars is underway, their sales volume in Uzbekistan has fallen sharply. “It would probably be too optimistic to launch a plant in Uzbekistan without understanding the sales volume,” the interlocutor believes. According to our data, a similar situation is developing with the restart of the AvtoVAZ project in Uzbekistan.
In the implementation of the flagship project of industrial cooperation between the two countries - the nuclear power plant project, judging by the statements of speakers at the exhibition, there are also no serious changes planned yet.
“Today, the state corporation Rosatom and the Uzatom agency are working on a draft general contract for the construction of a nuclear power plant, this is a large and multifaceted job,” Denis Manturov told Russian journalists in news traditions surrounding this project over the past two years. According to him, Rosatom is ready to provide Uzbekistan with additional proposals, including for low-power nuclear power plants.
The main headliner for photo sessions of visitors at Innoprom this time was products in the field of other fashionable alternative energy sources: the luxury hydrogen car Aurus Hydrogen, developed by the Scientific Research Automobile and Automotive Engine Institute (NAMI).
