He said that some 4.791 billion passengers were delivered to their destination with automobile transport in January-September 2012. The growth rate made up 5.5% year-on-year.

Freight turnover made up 19.467 billion tonnes-km (+5.4% compared to 2011) and passenger turnover – 55.667 billion passenger-km (+8% compared to 2011).

In the result, paid automobile services for 4.352 trillion soums (+17.4%) were rendered in January-September 2012.

Sunnatilla Sagatov said the agency also pays attention to development of market relations and competition environment in Uzbekistan. He said if there were 2,000 passenger routes in Uzbekistan in 2000, their number now reached 4,043 units (+6.1%). He said that 996 of them are city routes, 2,430 are suburb routes and 617 are international routes.

He said that the routes are placed among transportation companies via open tenders. Currently, 3,999 of these routes or 98.9% were placed via open tenders. In 2012, some 110 open tenders were held in Uzbekistan to place 149 city routes, 841 suburb routes 174 inter-city and inter-regional routes.

He said that the agency with local administration is also working on updating passenger vehicles. He said that in nine months of 2012, Bukhara region purchased 76 Isuzu buses on leasing, Andijan region – 56, Khorezm region – 45, Samarkand region – 35, Kashkadarya region – 30, Navoi region – 26, Ferghana region – 23, Tashkent region – 13 region, Surkhandarya region – 12, Tashkent city – 8, Karakalpakstan – 2. Overall 326 new buses started to render services to population.

In nine months of 2012, the agency and its regional branches issued 2,202 licenses and 139,535 license certificates, he said.

Number of legal entities, which render transport services, grew from 314 in 2006 to 2,352 as of 1 October 2012 (+7.5 times).