The C5+1's $25bn and the EU's EUR 12bn still rest on letters of interest

Marco Rubio is due in Samarkand in mid-October with executives from more than 100 American companies, for a C5+1 ministerial in the city that held the format's first in November 2015. On 29 and 30 September, officials in Tashkent set up the machinery meant to turn the European Union's EUR 12bn Global Gateway package for Central Asia into actual projects, a package announced at the first EU-Central Asia summit in April 2025. Both tracks carry large headline numbers: the US Department of Commerce put the November 2025 "Deal Zone" above USD 25bn. The question is narrower and answerable: of those totals, how much is contractual.

What Washington actually announced

The Commerce Department's own list of Deal Zone announcements, dated 6 November 2025, is the best test: it names the instrument in each case. Boeing and Air Astana "signed a commitment for the purchase of up to (15) 787 Dreamliners"; Boeing and Tajikistan's Somon Air signed a commitment for up to four 787s and ten 737 MAX aircraft; John Deere "signed a Letter of Intent" with the government of Kazakhstan; VEON's Beeline unit celebrated a memorandum of understanding on direct-to-cell service; and OpenAI, Nvidia, Freedom Holding Corporation and Kazakhstan's digital development ministry signed a memorandum procuring "up to $2 billion in advanced AI chips". In Tajikistan the itemised figures are small: a USD 30m memorandum with Avesto Group on a national geological data platform, and a USD 2.43m preliminary agreement with Marmari.

Three entries are of a different order. Leidos has a signed contract with Kazaeronavigatsia for the national air traffic management system, with a 19-year period of performance covering four control centres and 21 towers. Uzbekistan Airways converted eight options into a final order, taking its 787 book to 22. And Commerce records a USD 4bn locomotive contract with Wabtec already signed around the UN General Assembly, with Citi financing as the follow-up. The Kyrgyz items are capital-markets transactions rather than pledges: Oppenheimer underwriting a USD 300m five-year bond for state-owned Aiyl Bank, after the republic's inaugural USD 700m sovereign bond.

Times of Central Asia puts Kazakhstan's share of the USD 25bn total above USD 17bn, and makes the same distinction: the aircraft "commitments" signal intent, with binding contracts to follow, and the mining headline rests on a letter of interest that is "indicative and non-binding".

The flagship is a letter of interest

The clearest case is the tungsten project Washington treats as proof of concept. Commerce called Cove Capital's partnership with Kazakhstan over Severniy Katpar "a once-in-a-generation agreement", with "the immediate transaction valued at over $1 billion related to mineral deposits valued at over $80 billion".

The company's own 2026 filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission is more cautious. Cove Kaz acquired a 70 per cent interest in Severniy Katpar LLP, Kazakhstan's national mining company holding 30 per cent; total development costs are "estimated at approximately $1.1 billion"; Northern Katpar and Upper Kairakty are designed for about 5,000 and 7,000 tonnes a year, 12,000 in total. The two federal financing commitments are, in the filing's words, letters of interest: up to USD 900m from the Export-Import Bank and up to USD 700m from the Development Finance Corporation, neither binding. The most recent feasibility study dates from April 2023, and the definitive study was due to commence only in the second half of 2026. Nothing in the filing commits a date for production.

Brussels has the same number and a new committee

The EU's figure has had a longer run. RFE/RL reported in October 2025 that of the EUR 12bn, EUR 3bn was earmarked for the Middle Corridor, on top of EUR 10bn pledged in 2024, and that Kazakhstan's ambassador to the EU described feasibility studies as still under way. The EEAS list of deliverables signed at the Global Gateway Trans-Caspian forum on 27 November 2025 bears that out: EUR 15m of technical assistance on trade facilitation and customs, EUR 10m of preparatory studies with the World Bank, EUR 5m with the EBRD, EUR 10.4m of EU money inside a EUR 35m EBRD loan for Aktau port, EUR 15.46m inside an EBRD loan for a 31.7km Kyrgyz road, a EUR 150m EIB loan with a EUR 8.8m EU guarantee for Kazakh roads and up to EUR 100m with a EUR 6m guarantee for Uzbekistan's Nukus highway.

The number was then announced again. Trend reported on 22 September 2026 that Ursula von der Leyen, presenting a connectivity initiative linking the South Caucasus and Central Asia to European markets, said: "Through the Global Gateway, we intend to attract up to 12 billion euros in public and private investment." Whether that is the Samarkand package restated or additional money cannot be established from the published sources.

What changed in late September was administration. Trend and the EEAS record the first meeting of the Uzbekistan-EU Working Group on Investment and Financial and Technical Cooperation in Tashkent on 29 September, co-chaired by Deputy Minister of Investment, Industry and Trade Akram Aliyev and the Commission's Peteris Ustubs, described by Uzbekistan's ministry as "an important platform for translating the Global Gateway investment package into concrete projects", with the ambition of expanding grants through the EU's 2028-34 financial programmes. A second national Trans-Caspian corridor conference followed on 30 September, co-chaired by Transport Minister Ilhom Makhkamov; Trend's account records no financial commitments from it.

The volumes are real even where the money is not

Traffic is not waiting for either package. Trend, citing Kazakhstan's railway company, reported 44,200 TEU over the Trans-Caspian route in the first eight months of 2026, up 58 per cent year on year. The comparison that matters for leverage remains unflattering: RFE/RL put China's trade with Central Asia at a record USD 94.8bn in 2024, against intraregional trade among the five of roughly USD 11bn on Times of Central Asia's account.

That is the balancing position in practice. The five states can collect announcements from more than ten "plus one" formats while the instruments behind them stay studies, memoranda and letters of interest, and the freight moves on infrastructure financed before the summits.

What to watch

• Whether the Samarkand ministerial publishes instruments, values and timelines, or another aggregate total.
• Whether EXIM and DFC convert their letters of interest on the tungsten project into binding commitments, and whether the definitive feasibility study has in fact started.
• Whether the Uzbekistan-EU working group produces a named project portfolio with dates, as officials said it would.
• Whether the Commission clarifies that the September 2026 "up to EUR 12 billion" is the Samarkand package or money additional to it.

Sources

• US Department of Commerce — Central Asia Business Conference: Commercial Deal Zone Announcements, 6 November 2025
• SEC — Northern Katpar and Upper Kairakty (Cove Kaz Capital Group exhibit)
• EEAS — Global Gateway: Trans-Caspian Transport Corridor and Connectivity Investors Forum: Key Deliverables
• EEAS — European Union and Uzbekistan to advance connectivity priorities on the Trans-Caspian Transport Corridor
• Trend — Uzbekistan, EU launch platform to advance EUR 12bn Global Gateway package
• Trend — Uzbekistan, EU push investments to strengthen Trans-Caspian Corridor
• Trend — EUR 12B for Middle Corridor: Azerbaijan's efforts boost route's importance for EU
• RFE/RL — EU readies new trade routes, and a challenge to Beijing and Moscow, at Luxembourg summit
• Times of Central Asia — Rubio to lead major US business delegation to Uzbekistan for C5+1 talks
• Times of Central Asia — Washington shifts C5+1 from diplomacy to deals
• Times of Central Asia — C5+1 meets again in Samarkand, but Central Asia has changed
• Times of Central Asia — C5+1 at 10: Washington seeks concrete outcomes with Central Asia