Deputy Prime Minister/Minister of Economy and Finance Jamshid Kuchkarov spoke about Uzbekistan's plans to complete the transition to the wholesale electricity and gas market at the St. Petersburg International Gas Forum Thursday.

"We must reliably supply the households and economic entities with natural gas. Of course, we have our own production, but at the same time we import. We must now consider both economic growth and the expected results from increasing the energy efficiency of the economy," he said.

According to the Deputy PM, Uzbekistan plans to complete the transition to the wholesale electricity market in 2027, and natural gas in 2028. "Our gas production is carried out both by our companies and under the PSA (production sharing agreement - ed.). There are new small companies. We want more companies to be on the production market in Uzbekistan," he said.

He noted that as an element of energy market reforms, increasing efficiency and reducing natural gas losses, Uzbekistan had adopted a program to hand over gas distribution networks to the private sector through a public-private partnership mechanism.

“We are currently preparing such a project using the example of the Bukhara province, and this will also, in our opinion, help reduce natural gas losses. You have heard that Turkey consumes 63 BCM of gas. We consume a little less, while our population is half as large, and our economy is also smaller. This is how much work we need to do. At the same time, I must say that we are participating in this gas forum to continue our cooperation with Gazprom, Russian and our other partners,” Jamshid Kuchkarov said.