This opinion was expressed by the First Deputy Director of the Institute for Strategic and Regional Studies under the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan (ISRS) Akramjon Nematov, participating in the work of the conference of CIS analytical centers “New Agenda for Long-Term Cooperation”.

The international forum, held in Tashkent on the initiative of the President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev, is attended by heads and experts of leading analytical and research centers of the CIS member states.

According to Akramjon Nematov, the distinctive feature of the Commonwealth is the developed contractual-legal and institutional base of multilateral cooperation. More than 80 bodies, including 67 industry structures, operate within the CIS, and almost 7 thousand normative-legal acts and other documents have been adopted.

This provides an opportunity to conduct a comprehensive dialogue on a wide range of issues, involving not only representatives of socio-political circles but also civil society activists, cultural figures, the academic community, the creative intelligentsia, business representatives, and youth.

It is the model of multifaceted and multi-format interaction that has developed in the CIS, the wide range of participants, and the experience of practical communication accumulated over the years that make the CIS a unique organization, allows us to maintain an atmosphere of trust and cooperation in the Commonwealth, and painlessly overcome the crises of our time.

Thus, despite the negative trends in the global economy, the growth of the aggregate GDP in the CIS by the end of 2023 amounted to almost 4%, while the volume of mutual trade continues to increase steadily.

According to the expert, this is undoubtedly a great merit of the Leader of Uzbekistan. With the election of Shavkat Mirziyoyev to the post of President, Uzbekistan radically changed its approaches to cooperation within the CIS and began to play a leading role in integration processes in the Commonwealth.

Uzbekistan takes an active part in the work of all statutory bodies of the CIS, having joined all bodies of sectoral cooperation, and pursues a proactive and initiative policy within the Commonwealth. 

In particular, since 2017, Uzbekistan has put forward 90 practical proposals within the CIS to develop further cooperation on a wide range of issues in the political, economic, cultural, and humanitarian spheres, as well as in the security field. Moreover, 80 of them have been implemented to date.

In fact, in recent years, Uzbekistan has become a diplomatic center of the Commonwealth, where meetings of the statutory bodies and structures of sectoral cooperation of the CIS are regularly held. It is also no coincidence that in 2024, Tashkent was declared the Youth Capital and Samarkand the Cultural Capital of the Commonwealth. 

Evidence of Uzbekistan’s firm commitment to long-term cooperation within the Commonwealth and the full use of all its capabilities was the approval of more than 50 essential program documents during Uzbekistan’s chairmanship of the CIS in 2020, primarily the adoption of the Concept for Further Development of the CIS and the Strategy for Economic Development of the CIS until 2030.

UzA