Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) -- Experts from the Institute for Forecasting and Macroeconomic Research (IPMI) analyzed the implemented measures for the development of services in Uzbekistan and their results in 2017-2022.

The development of the service sector is significant for economic growth, providing employment (especially for young people) of the population and improving living standards.

At the end of 2022 in GDP, the share of the service sector was 41.5% and in 2017-2022 real growth in the service sector was 1.9 times.

In recent years, important steps have been taken to support and accelerate the development of the industry.

In particular:

- the "Electronic Government" system was further developed and the total number of electronic public services reached 368 services (in 2019 - 173), 242 of them are intended for entrepreneurs;

- business registration was simplified and the number of small businesses increased by 2.2 times (from 128 thousand in 2017 to 325 thousand in 2022);

- the ICT infrastructure was improved by 6 times (the total length of fiber-optic communication lines increased from 20.3 thousand km in 2017 to 118 thousand km in 2022) and the logistics system by 1.2 times (cargo transportation from 1146.2 million tons in 2017 to 1398.9 million tons in 2022).

As a result of stimulating the involvement of the private sector in the development of modern services, there were:

- financial services increased by 5.1 times. Attracting private and foreign banks to the sphere has increased their competitiveness. HHI for assets on 1 December 2022 fell to 1016 (as of 1 January 2018 was 1520);

- services in the field of information and communication increased by 2.8 times. The capacity of the international data transmission network reached 1800 Gbps in 2022 (from 64.2 Gbps in 2017);

- educational services increased by 2.5 times. The number of private preschool educational institutions reached 833 (from 250 in 2017), preschool institutions based on public-private partnership 1313 (from 250 in 2018), family preschool educational institutions 20676 (from 579 in 2018), non-state general educational institutions institutions 194 (from 39 in 2017) non-state higher education institutions 55 (from 1 in 2018), foreign higher education institutions 30 (from 7 in 2017);

- Health care services have doubled and today there are 7320 private medical institutions (4000 in 2017), out of the bottom 5823 outpatient and 1497 inpatient.