This opinion was shared by the Deputy Director of the Institute for Strategic and Regional Studies under the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan (ISRS), Bakhtiyor Mustafayev, addressing the online conference “Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan: New Prospects for Mutually Beneficial Cooperation”, which took place on August 27 in Tashkent.

The event, organized by ISRS jointly with the Center for Analysis of International Relations of the Republic of Azerbaijan, was attended by the heads of diplomatic missions of Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan and the heads and experts of leading analytical and research centers of the two countries.

The ISRS Deputy Director emphasized the importance of the event, which was held following a significant event – the visit of the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev to Uzbekistan. Bakhtiyor Mustafayev is convinced that “Having moved to a new stage of multifaceted cooperation at the level of allied bilateral relations, our states have made a colossal breakthrough”.

As the expert noted, “Behind this is the political determination and will of our leaders, who year after year raised the stage of bilateral cooperation. This allowed us to quickly bring relations between Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan to the highest level of interstate interaction”.

According to the ISRS representative, trade and economic cooperation occupies a key place in bilateral relations, which, thanks to joint efforts, has acquired a new quality. “Over the past 9 years, the volume of trade between Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan has increased 11 times, and the number of joint ventures – 3.5 times”, the expert emphasized.

According to the ISRS Deputy Director, expanding the agenda of economic cooperation in new areas plays an important role in this regard.

First of all, this is the deepening of trade relations by replacing imports from third countries, considering the complementarity of our economies. “This is becoming especially relevant in the context of global instability and disruption of supply chains for essential products”, Bakhtiyor Mustafayev emphasized.

Second, this is the implementation of joint industrial cooperation projects. The expert believes that the active acceleration of economic cooperation will ensure the creation of competitive and export-oriented industries in Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan in the future.

Third, according to the ISRS Deputy Director, strengthening ties in the energy sector is one of the priority tasks for developing partnership between Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan. “In the long term, this will increase the export capabilities of our countries, which is very important in the context of the global trend towards the transition to renewable energy sources”, the expert expressed confidence.

The expert named the development of transit and logistics interaction as another important area of ​​​​bilateral cooperation. He said, “The implementation of joint projects in this area should be considered an important factor in economic growth”.

“Thus, by creating groundwork in key areas of interaction today, we are not only making a significant contribution to strengthening our bilateral dialogue, but also laying the foundations for more extensive development of ties between Central Asia and the South Caucasus”, concluded Bakhtiyor Mustafayev.

UzA