The World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors approved today a $50 million concessional credit for Uzbekistan that will finance a five-year project supporting the Government’s efforts to modernize the national statistical system and improve the capacity of the State Committee on Statistics (SCS). These improvements will help produce and disseminate data in line with international standards.
The International Development Association (IDA), a part of the World Bank Group, will provide the concessional financing to the Government of Uzbekistan at a very low-interest rate, with a repayment period of 30 years, including a five-year grace period.
Strengthening the national statistical system is at the core of the Government’s reform agenda. Although the SCS’ statistical data sharing capacity has increased significantly since 2017, the ongoing National Statistical Development Strategy recognizes that many existing systems are still outdated, labor-intensive, and do not comply with international standards.
The project will invest in rapid improvements in the agency’s human resources capacity and technological resources to process, analyze, and report key statistical measures. Its key components focus on improving the organizational structure and operational capacity of SCS, as well as improving statistical data production and data dissemination.
The project will assist Uzbekistan in carrying out its first population census since independence, help modernize national accounts, and increase coverage of essential development priorities, including gender equality, poverty reduction, and environmental sustainability.
The project also envisions transitioning the SCS’s operations from paper documents to electronic data collection and distribution, production of the Annual Statistical Yearbook, and development of the SCS’s official website, along with various related databases on its platform.
“With the World Bank’s technical support, the SCS prepared the National Strategy for the Development of Statistics for 2020-2025,” said Marco Mantovanelli, World Bank Country Manager for Uzbekistan. “We are proud to support the implementation of this strategy through the new project. High-quality statistical data will help advance Uzbekistan’s ambitious transformation by strengthening decision making and policy implementation based on data and evidence,” he concluded.
The country program for Uzbekistan is the World Bank’s second largest operation in the Europe and Central Asia region. It comprises 25 projects, – in areas, including economic management; agricultural modernization; health; education; water supply and sanitation; energy; transport; social protection; urban and rural infrastructure; and the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, among others.
Under its new five-year Country Partnership Framework currently in preparation, the World Bank will continue providing financial and analytical support to the Government to implement reforms provided by Uzbekistan’s Development Strategy for 2022-2026.