President of the Republic of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev has visited the Alpomish LLC in the city of Samarqand.

President of the Republic of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev has visited the Alpomish LLC in the city of Samarqand.

There were presentations of a number of promising projects directed towards the socio-economic development of the region.

Samarqand Region has great tourism potential. Consistent work is being carried out to develop tourism, to raise the quality of tourism services and to expand their scope. To further raise this sector’s potential and to increase the tourist flow, a project was drawn up to create a free tourism zone in the city of Samarqand. Under this project to be implemented in 2017-2019, a tourism-entertainment hotel complex on the Amir Temur street and a winter recreational facility on the banks of the Samarqand rowing canal are to be built.

Information about these tourism centres’ possibilities and about services to be provided for tourists and projects to observe Uzbek national values at entertainment facilities were presented to the Head of State.

In Samarqand Region, too, as in all the other regions of the country, large-scale measures are being carried out to rapidly develop the small business and private entrepreneurship sphere and to support free entrepreneurial activity. The President’s decree dated 12 January 2017 on creating “Urgut”, “Ghijduvon”, “Qoqon” and “Hazorasp” free economic zones opens up broad opportunities for this sphere.

Under the decision, the “Urgut” free economic zone’s “Urgut-1” area was created in Urgut District, “Urgut-2” in Nurobod District and “Urgut-3” in Pastdarghom District. A total of 816 hectares of land was allocated in these areas, and work has been started to provide them with the necessary engineering-communication infrastructure. Today projects are being implemented to produce light industry goods, home appliances, medical equipment, pharmaceuticals, leather shoes, stationery and building materials. 83 projects were drawn up for the years 2017-2018, and 20 of them will be implemented this year.

These projects, the overall value of which is 250 million dollars, will be financed with credits from commercial banks and funds from founders. As a result, 5.5 thousand new jobs will be created.

The President said that a systemic approach was necessary to work on the creation of this strategic zone. Qualified entrepreneurs should be attracted to this zone, the work of industrial zones abroad should be studied and advanced experiences should be put into practice here. A specific college in Urgut District should be chosen for training personnel for the economic zone, and such work should be done in the “Ghijduvon”, “Qoqon” and “Hazorasp” free economic zones too.

At a dialogue with entrepreneurs, recommendations were given on effectively using the favourable business climate being created there, on raising the quality of products, on developing export activity, on studying external markets and on stepping up cooperation with foreign businessmen.