What the leading business media of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan report — selected and summarized in English every morning, for readers who don't read Russian or the local languages. Data context in the Central Asia Terminal. Also: Russia Digest.
Kazakhstan outlines plans to hand part of its pension assets to private managers, Uzbekistan extends local-content rules to incentivised investment projects, and container rates on the Caspian route held steady in October.
Private investment portfolio managers could manage 20–30% of Kazakhstan's pension assets by 2030 under the Capital Market Development Programme for 2026–2030, the Kazakhstan Association of Minority Shareholders (QAMS) reports. As of 1 October the National Bank managed 26.63 trillion tenge, or 99.24% of the 26.84 trillion tenge held by the ENPF; private managers held just over 206 billion tenge. Selection rules and mandates are to be drafted in 2027 and tested in a regulatory sandbox in 2027–2028, starting with government securities portfolios and later extending to corporate bonds and Kazakh equities; Kursiv estimates the target implies private portfolios of about 5.37–8.05 trillion tenge.
Source: Kursiv, 9 Nov 2026
Local-content rules that now apply to energy public-private partnership projects, with a minimum 25% share of domestic products and 70% for cables, will be extended to investment projects worth more than $10 million that receive tax or other incentives or cheap state resources, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev said on 9 November. The state buys about 10 trillion sum of electrical equipment a year; from 1 January 2027 three-year procurement plans are to be published in advance, and tenders will assess life-cycle cost rather than lowest price alone. Foreign investors relying on state incentives will need to account for domestic sourcing obligations in project budgets.
Source: Gazeta.uz, 9 Nov 2026
Shipping a 40-foot high-cube container from Xi'an to Alyat or Absheron in Baku cost $6,750–7,200 in October, and $7,200–8,000 to Ambarli or Mersin in Türkiye via Baku, both unchanged from September, according to price agency Argus. Rates had been rising since the start of 2026 on concerns over disruption to alternative sea routes and instability in the Middle East. Empty containers idling in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Kazakhstan rose to 3,700–4,000 units at the end of October from 3,500–3,700 in September, while the three countries agreed in September–October to simplify border procedures for container cargo.
Source: inbusiness.kz, 9 Nov 2026
President Sadyr Japarov signed a law requiring employers to raise wages in line with price growth, restoring a provision dropped from the Labour Code adopted in 2025, Kursiv reports citing kaktus.media. Lawmakers cited cumulative inflation of more than 28% in 2022–2024. There is no uniform automatic rate: the government will set rules for the public sector, while private employers must fix the size and frequency of increases in collective or internal agreements, which companies operating in Kyrgyzstan will need to update.
Source: Kursiv, 9 Nov 2026
Uzbekistan harvested more than 5 million tonnes of raw cotton in 2026 worth 34 trillion sum, against about 4 million tonnes in 2025, Agriculture Minister Ibrokhim Abdurakhmonov said on 6 November. He attributed the increase to bollworm-resistant biotech varieties and denser planting, with average yields of 70 centners per hectare on almost 400,000 hectares. Some 75–80% of this year's crop was machine-harvested, and the country plans to end manual picking from 2027.
Source: Gazeta.uz, 8 Nov 2026
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