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Uzbekistan
Postcommunist Economic Reform
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Uzbekistan faced serious
economic challenges: the breakdown of central planning from Moscow
and the end of a reliable, if limited, system of interrepublican
trade and payments mechanisms; production inefficiencies; the
prevalence of monopolies; declining productivity; and loss of
the significant subsidies and payments that had come from Moscow.
All these changes signaled that fundamental reform would be necessary
if the economy of Uzbekistan were to continue to be viable.
Traditionally a raw materials supplier for the rest of the Soviet
Union, Uzbekistan saw its economy hard hit by the breakdown of
the highly integrated Soviet economy. Factories in Uzbekistan
could not get the raw materials they needed to diversify the national
economy, and the end of subsidies from Moscow was exacerbated
by concurrent declines in world prices for Uzbekistan's two major
export commodities, gold and cotton.
Data as of March 1996
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