Surprising signs of economic reform emerge in Uzbekistan, Central Asia's largest country

When ministers from faraway countries tour Western financial centers to tout their plans for economic reform, their presentations are often drearily predictable. There is typically lots of talk about "fiscal consolidation," improving infrastructure and the soundness of the banking system.

Not Djamshed Kuchkarov, finance minister of Uzbekistan: he is proudest of what his government is not doing.

The most important economic reform since Shavkat Mirziyoyev succeeded Islam Karimov as president in 2016, he said, is a three-year moratorium on business inspections. Government could do businessmen no greater favor, he implied, than getting out of their way and letting them get on with things, without fear of extortion.

In a region full of state-dominated, bureaucratic, corruption-riddled economies, it is a revolutionary thought.

Karimov was already running Uzbekistan when it became independent from the Soviet Union in 1991. He preserved all sorts of Soviet economic policies, including an inflated official exchange rate, currency controls and an enormous role for the state in industry and farming. To that he added such standard post-Soviet abuses as the expropriation of any private business that looked worth seizing.

Few had expected Mirziyoyev to change much of this. He had, after all, served as Karimov's prime minister for 13 years. But since coming to power he has set about renovating the economy, as well as initiating more limited political reforms. Uzbekistan, with 32 million people, is the most populous country in Central Asia. Until recently, it was also one of the region's most stagnant and repressive — in a competitive field. Overnight, it has become a showcase for reform.

Mirziyoyev has sharply devalued the currency, the som, bringing the official and black-market rates into alignment. Exporters are no longer required to sell a quarter of their foreign-currency revenue to the government.

Kuchkarov also trumpeted the government's decision to allow petty traders to cross the country's previously closed borders, which he said is spurring cottage industries in areas like the Fergana valley, where Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan intertwine.

The area's arbitrary Soviet-era borders had separated many families, who are delighted by the new opening. Yuliy Yusupov, an economist based in Tashkent, Uzbekistan's capital, likens the effect to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The authorities have approved the first flights in 25 years between Tashkent and Dushanbe in Tajikistan. "Connectivity" is a buzzword for the government, which recently hosted a conference on improving regional infrastructure and economic cooperation. The opening is already yielding benefits: trade with the rest of Central Asia has risen by half since 2017.

Uzbekistan has leapt up the World Bank's ease-of-doing-business rankings, from 166th in 2012 to 76th this year. The government has greatly simplified the tax code, to turn it into a mechanism for actually collecting tax, rather than bribes. It is also restructuring state-owned enterprises, with a view to their eventual privatization. The management of airports and the state-owned airline is being separated, for example, as are the generation, transmission and distribution of electricity.

In February, Uzbekistan sold its first dollar-denominated bond, partly to set a benchmark for borrowing by local companies. It yields 5.4 percent over 10 years, and was heavily oversubscribed.

But as the bond prospectus noted, the immediate effect of the upheaval is to hamper the economy. Inflation has jumped to 14 percent because of the devaluation of the som. GDP growth has slowed from 7.9 percent in 2015 (suspiciously, it always grew by about 8 percent under Karimov) to 5.1 percent last year. Unemployment has also risen.

Investors remain wary. They especially distrust the courts, which readily endorsed past expropriations.

The true accountability that business requires to flourish is still absent. Mirziyoyev has created limited space for public debate, releasing some political prisoners and tolerating a degree of criticism. Forced evictions and demolitions of homes to make way for big construction projects currently underway in Tashkent, for instance, have led to widespread condemnation — something Karimov would have stamped out. But Uzbekistan still lacks opposition parties and free media.

Just how far Mirziyoyev's reforms will go is a burning question. There is no indication that genuine democracy is on offer. Even economic reforms are bound to prompt resistance from entrenched elites.

But the fact that any reforms are being undertaken at all is a big step forward.