How a business can enter a growing market without corporate mistakes
In July 2026, Belarus and Uzbekistan signed a Declaration on the Establishment of Strategic Partnership Relations and a roadmap for cooperation for 2026 – 2030. Trade turnover between the two countries grew almost 5.3 times in 2025, and more than 200 companies with Belarusian capital already operate in Uzbekistan.
The growth in the figures does not mean that entering the market has become technically easier: Uzbekistan has its own specifics of corporate, currency and antimonopoly regulation. Where the structuring of a business in Uzbekistan begins, which incentives are available and where businesses most often lose time and money – explains Marina Matyuk, Senior Lawyer at the international legal group of companies REVERA, coordinator of the legal panel of REVERA in Uzbekistan.
The first question to be resolved before any documents are signed is the form of presence. It depends on the business model and the planning horizon.
A separate nuance is the status of a company with foreign participation. If the charter fund is formed in an amount of 400 million soums or more (about USD 35,000; for Karakalpakstan and the Khorezm region — about USD 18,000*), the company obtains the status of an enterprise with foreign investment (EFI) and access to additional incentives and preferences — in particular, to the simplified regime under which a foreign director may work without a work permit during the first three months. Without reaching this threshold, the company operates with the status of an ordinary enterprise with foreign participation — under the tax regime of a resident company, but without special preferences.
* We recommend verifying the exact threshold, the exchange rate and the amount as at the time the transaction is structured.
For IT companies there is a separate track — residency of the IT park: a virtual office for registration purposes, simplified engagement of foreign specialists, a reduced personal income tax rate of 7.5% for employees (instead of the standard 12%) and a 5% preferential rate of dividend tax for foreign founders. Before building the tax model into a business plan, the current list of incentives must be verified as at the time of structuring.
For industrial and manufacturing projects — and it is precisely these that are currently driving Belarusian-Uzbek cooperation — free economic zones are more relevant: there are more than 30 of them in the country, and they provide tax and customs incentives together with ready-made infrastructure. The entry threshold starts at USD 300,000 of investment, and the larger the volume, the longer the incentives remain in force.
The generally established tax regime for 2025 – 2026 provides for profit tax of 15%, VAT of 12%, personal income tax of 12% and social tax of 12%. Companies with aggregate income of up to 1 billion soums may apply the simplified turnover tax at a rate of 4% (for certain sectors, for example e-commerce, the rate is lower — 3%). The network of double taxation treaties should be taken into account separately — Uzbekistan’s network is fairly broad and includes Russia, the CIS countries and a number of EU states, which makes it possible to reduce withholding tax rates on dividends, interest and royalties where ownership is structured correctly.
In practice, difficulties arise not at the stage of choosing the form of presence but later — when it comes to restructuring ownership, acquiring a participatory interest (share) in an existing Uzbek LLC or setting up a joint venture with a local partner. There are bottlenecks here that are rarely visible from the outside.
Pre-emptive right of the participants. The sale of a participatory interest in an LLC requires strict compliance with the procedure for notifying the participants and the company and obtaining their waiver of the right to purchase — within specific deadlines. If some of the participants are citizens of other countries (a frequent situation in joint structures), obtaining notarised waivers becomes more complicated — it is necessary to assess whether they can be executed in the participant’s country of citizenship.
Antimonopoly control. Not every transaction requires clearance, but checking it against the economic concentration criteria is a mandatory step before closing the transaction.
Currency and corporate legislation has its own specifics where foreign corporate documents are used in the territory of Uzbekistan — their legalisation and use require separate attention.
It is precisely these details that determine whether a transaction takes a notional two weeks or drags on for months because the documents have to be re-agreed.
Since 2020, a single investment law has been in force in Uzbekistan, enshrining key guarantees: non-discriminatory treatment, protection against nationalisation, stability of legislation (an investor may rely on the rules that were in force at the time the investment was made) and the possibility of freely repatriating profits. According to the available data, no cases of nationalisation of foreign investors’ businesses have been recorded over the past 15–17 years.
If a dispute does arise, investors more often opt for international arbitration — Uzbekistan is a party to the New York Convention, and awards of foreign arbitral tribunals are recognised and enforced in the country. The International Commercial Arbitration Court also operates and is becoming increasingly sought after as an alternative to the state courts.
A separate opportunity that directly concerns not only the company but the entrepreneur personally is a residence permit. The grounds for it may be the registration of a company with charter capital of approximately USD 31,000 or more (this threshold differs from the EFI threshold for a company referred to above), employment as a qualified specialist, the acquisition of real estate or investment.
Since June 2025 a simplified investment programme has been in place: a five-year residence permit may be obtained for a one-off contribution of USD 250,000 or more per applicant and USD 150,000 for each family member. For IT specialists and investors there are a separate IT visa and an investment visa.
An important practical point: an individual becomes a tax resident of Uzbekistan if present in the country for more than 183 days in a year — the fact of holding a residence permit does not in itself automatically create tax residency, but it usually presupposes permanent residence, which de facto leads to it. Uzbekistan participates in the international automatic exchange of financial information, so this point should be taken into account in the personal tax planning of business owners.
The roadmap for 2026 – 2030 and the growing number of joint ventures show that the window of opportunity for Belarusian business is not a one-off episode but a long-term trend. The paradox of the Uzbek market is that the registration of a company itself is a fast and largely remote procedure, which creates a deceptive sense of simplicity. The real complexity begins where that simplicity ends: when choosing the company’s status, when calculating the current tax burden amid the phasing out of the incentives of the IT-Park or in transactions involving participatory interests in existing companies. Investors that engage local legal support at the outset go through all the stages — registration, tax structuring, transactions with participatory interests — faster and with fewer reworks.
If you are planning to enter the Uzbek market, it is important to determine the legal structure and to check the key risks before registering a company or entering into a transaction with a local partner.
REVERA lawyers will help you to assess the market entry model, choose a suitable form of presence, carry out tax and corporate due diligence and support transactions with local partners in Uzbekistan.
Contact the REVERA team to discuss your matter and to prepare a market entry plan that takes into account the specifics of Uzbek regulation.
