India will invest $3 billion in Uzbekistan. This is the result of the state visit of Uzbekistan's President Shavkat Mirziyoyev to New Delhi. During the talks with India's President Ram Nath Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, they discussed ways of expanding interstate cooperation. The heads of the two states also signed a package of intergovernmental agreements and several documents between the regions, which would bring Uzbek-Indian relations to a qualitatively new level.
The partnership between India and Uzbekistan is of a strategic nature. Back in 2014, they signed a contract for the supply of 2000 tonnes of uranium, then Narendra Modi visited Uzbekistan in both 2015 and 2016. At the talks with the leadership of Uzbekistan, he agreed on expanding trade and economic cooperation. Uzbekistan and India agreed to triple the volume of foreign trade turnover from $323.6 million in 2017 to more than $1 million by 2020. In particular, more than 50 investment projects in Uzbekistan worth about $3 billion were signed following the results of the Indian-Uzbek business forum. India considers its trade partnership with Tashkent as an opportunity to increase the import of medicines, ferrous metals, various technological equipment, spare parts for cars. Uzbekistan intends to increase the supply of agricultural products, fertilizers, non-ferrous and rare metals, textiles and petrochemicals to India.
"Tashkent is interested in the emergence of a new powerful player in its market, capable of offering not only goods but also technologies for joint production. 145 enterprises with Indian capital operating in the country is a good thing, but it's not enough. If the idea of building Indian technological clusters in Uzbekistan, which is actively discussed by the parties,is realized, the number of joint Uzbek-Indian high-tech enterprises, of which only 21 has 100% Indian capital, will increase," Doctor of Political Sciences, Deputy Director General of the Center for Strategic Estimations and Forecasts Igor Pankratenko told Vestnik Kavkaza.
India tops the list of the fastest growing economies in the world for the coming decade. "The country claims to be the third economy of the world. In recent years, the country has made a serious breakthrough by strengthening industry and the IT sectors, expanding exports and actively participating in global integration processes. According to the World Bank, its GDP grew 7.2% in the October-December quarter of 2017-18. China's growth was only 6.8% during the same period," director of the Tashkent Center for Research Initiatives "Ma'no" Bakhtiyor Ergashev, told Vestnik Kavkaza. According to him, India is looking for new markets, and the Central Asian countries suit perfectly for these purposes. But they need a road connecting the countries, therefore, India develops its transport corridors. In particular, the North-South corridor, which will open a competitive and fast route from Eurasia to India and will unite the Indian port of Mumbai with the seaports of Iran in the Persian Gulf. Uzbekistan also plans a rail route connecting it with Iran's port of Chorbahr.
According to Igor Pankratenko, India's leadership seeks to link the development of strategic partnership in the economy with the requirements of foreign policy. Today, New Delhi considers Tashkent the most promising and "comfortable" potential partner for expanding India's political presence in the region.
"The main thing here is, of course, the issue of a peaceful settlement in Afghanistan. By engaging in this process, Uzbekistan has already made significant progress in this direction. By cooperating with Tashkent, India is also trying to improve its co-sponsor status in this process. Especially since the TAPI project - the realization of is quite difficult without the active participation of Uzbekistan - is of fundamental importance for New Delhi," the expert believes. According to him, New Delhi believes that the Chinese initiative One Belt, One Road is its main external challenge now. The problem for the leadership of India is that it has no levers of direct influence on its Chinese partners on this initiative in Central Asia. The only way to hinder the realization of projects within this initiative is to propose alternatives. A vivid example of which is New Delhi's active participation in the implementation of the project of an international transport and transit corridor between Iran, Oman, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan - the Ashgabat Agreement, which entered into force on April 23, 2016, joined by India on February 3, 2018. Moreover, there is every reason to assume that this is not the only alternative project offered by India to Tashkent in the near future.
