Uzbekistan’s WTO entry now depends on its own laws, not Geneva

Uzbekistan meant to join the World Trade Organization at the ministerial conference in Yaoundé in March. It did not, and the official explanation pointed outward, at member states slow to review its documents. Six months on, the record of the WTO’s own working party points somewhere else. The bilateral bargaining is nearly finished. What is left is a set of domestic reforms that only Tashkent can deliver, on state-owned companies, farm support, currency rules and the speed at which it passes laws. That makes accession more predictable than it was, but it also means any further delay will be Uzbekistan’s own.

How the March deadline was lost

The target was set in public. At the working party meeting of 5–6 November 2025, Deputy Prime Minister Jamshid Khodjaev said Uzbekistan remained committed to joining at the 14th Ministerial Conference (MC14). “What remains is to bring our collective work to conclusion,” he told members. At the next meeting, on 9 March 2026, the working party’s chair said momentum had been maintained, and the draft working party report had grown to 62 commitments from 56.

Three days later, the chief negotiator, Azizbek Urunov, conceded that accession could slip past March. “There are some countries that are delaying the review of our documents,” he told Gazeta.uz, declining to name them. MC14 itself then ended in the early hours of 30 March without a ministerial declaration. The Third World Network, a research and advocacy group, attributed the collapse largely to the United States’ decision to make the moratorium on customs duties on electronic transmissions the centrepiece of its agenda. Whatever the cause, no accession package was ready to adopt.

Losing the ministerial was less costly than it looked. A ministerial conference is a convenient stage for accession, not a requirement. Kazakhstan’s terms were approved by the WTO General Council on 27 July 2015, and it became the organisation’s 162nd member on 30 November that year, after ratification. Uzbekistan can follow the same route whenever its package is ready.

What the bilateral count shows

The numbers on bilateral market access deals vary by source, and the difference is one of definition. Urunov said in March that negotiations had been completed with 33 of the 34 members that asked for them, leaving only Taiwan. The WTO Secretariat counts agreements signed and deposited: 30 by the March meeting, when five were added from Ecuador, the European Union, Paraguay, Russia and Uruguay, and 31 by the July meeting, with India the latest. Both counts point the same way. Uzbekistan has settled terms with its largest trading partners in both east and west, including the EU and Russia. The market access stage is essentially finished.

The legislative work has also been heavy. In 2025, according to a government report cited by Gazeta.uz, officials answered more than 200 questions from members, held over 40 rounds of bilateral talks, aligned 68 legal acts with WTO rules, cut the list of regulated goods by 27 per cent and abolished mandatory certification for 747 product categories. Between March and July 2026 a further 190 legal and regulatory acts were brought into line, including new anti-dumping legislation and a single food safety committee. The political backing is explicit: President Shavkat Mirziyoyev has instructed officials to ensure the effective implementation of the measures needed for full membership. The bottleneck is not intent at the top but the throughput of drafting, review and adoption below it.

The questions that are left are domestic

At the thirteenth working party meeting, on 27–28 July, members welcomed the progress but said key laws were being adopted more slowly than expected. The open questions they listed were foreign exchange policy, import regulations, trade facilitation, investment policy and technical barriers to trade, together with further reform of state-owned enterprises and agricultural support. None of these can be settled by another bilateral deal. Each requires Uzbekistan to change how it runs parts of its own economy.

State-owned enterprises and farm support are the harder two. Members want assurance that state firms act on commercial terms and that support to agriculture stays within limits Uzbekistan will bind. Both commitments narrow the tools a government can use to steer output and prices. Foreign exchange and investment rules matter for a different reason: they determine whether the access Uzbekistan has agreed on paper can be used in practice by foreign firms that need to convert and repatriate money.

The chief negotiator’s language has shifted accordingly. After the July meeting, Urunov said the process had “reached a more advanced stage” and stressed the government’s commitment to work with members. The chair described negotiations as very close to conclusion. The next meeting is planned for late autumn, once the required documents have been circulated.

Why the timing matters for trade

Uzbekistan’s trade is growing quickly enough that the rules governing it now carry weight. Foreign trade reached $49.5bn in January–July 2026, up 8.1 per cent on a year earlier. Exports of goods other than gold grew 27.7 per cent to $9.8bn, and exports of services rose 35.3 per cent to $7.3bn. Machinery and transport equipment made up 32.8 per cent of imports. China was the largest trading partner, followed by Russia, Kazakhstan, Türkiye and Afghanistan.

That mix explains why membership is worth having. Among the fastest-growing exports are textiles, up 26.6 per cent to $1.9bn in January–July, and services, both exposed to discretionary barriers abroad. WTO membership gives them most-favoured-nation treatment and access to dispute settlement. It also binds Uzbekistan’s own tariffs and rules, which is the point for foreign investors weighing whether recent reforms will last. The same bindings reduce the room for the ad hoc import restrictions and price measures governments reach for in a shock, such as the surge in food imports, up 41.9 per cent in January–July, which was linked to keeping domestic prices stable.

What to watch

The late-autumn working party is the test. If it can adopt the report and the draft accession package, the General Council could approve Uzbekistan’s terms before the end of the year, and the government’s target of 2026 would be met on paper, with membership following ratification. If members again say key laws are missing, especially on state firms and farm support, early 2027 becomes the realistic date. The signal to look for before then is not another bilateral signing, but the adoption of the outstanding laws by Uzbekistan’s own parliament. Those laws, rather than events in Geneva, now set the timetable.

Sources

• WTO — Uzbekistan reaffirms goal to complete WTO accession in 2026 (13th working party, 27–28 July 2026)
• WTO — 12th meeting of the Working Party on the Accession of Uzbekistan (9 March 2026)
• WTO — 11th meeting of the Working Party on the Accession of Uzbekistan (5–6 November 2025)
• Gazeta.uz — Uzbekistan’s WTO accession may be delayed beyond March, says chief negotiator (12 March 2026)
• Gazeta.uz — Uzbekistan plans to become full WTO member in 2026 (7 May 2026)
• Third World Network — MC14 collapses as U.S. strategy derails Yaoundé negotiations (30 March 2026)
• WTO — Kazakhstan joins the WTO as 162nd member (30 November 2015)
• AKIpress — Foreign trade turnover of Uzbekistan reaches $49.5 billion in seven months (2026)