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TIIF 2026: Uzbekistan's aviation boom has outrun every forecast

Central Asia overtook South Asia last year to become the fastest-growing aviation sub-region in the world, carrying roughly 60mn passengers in 2025. Next up: the IPO of Uzbekistan Airways, the national carrier.

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Zelensky warns Belarus to remove military communications gear on the boarder or face an attack

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has issued his strongest warning yet to Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko, accusing Minsk of directly facilitating Russian drone attacks on Ukraine and giving Belarusian authorities one week to remove it.

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TIIF 2026: Germany turns to Uzbekistan as Berlin looks for growth, minerals and skilled workers in Central Asia

Germany is making one of its most visible business pushes into Uzbekistan in years, as Berlin looks beyond its traditional European and Asian markets for new sources of growth, raw materials, industrial partnerships and skilled labour.

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Colombia elects Trump-backed De la Espriella, extending region's rightward shift

Trump-backed lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella has won Colombia's presidency by a razor-thin margin, defeating Iván Cepeda as Latin America's rightward tilt gains another convert and Bogotá braces for unrest.

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TIIF 2026: Masdar and ACWA Power, twin engines behind Uzbekistan's renewable energy boom

Two Gulf utility giants control the lion's share of Central Asia's largest green energy market. At the Tashkent International Investment Forum (TIIF) this month, the two companies set out plans that would take investment capital to $20bn.

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Indonesia's Prabowo faces a reality check

When Prabowo Subianto took the oath of president of Indonesia, he promised a golden era of stability, robust state-led growth, and the arrival of Indonesia on the global superpower stage.

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World Cup fever and K-pop brigades collide with Colombia's bitter run-off

Colombians head to the polls today in a presidential run-off shadowed by allegations of vote coercion, foreign interference and a culture war fought largely on social media.

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TIIF 2026: Albania looks to Central Asia and Middle Corridor links to Asia

When Albanian President Bajram Begaj addressed the Tashkent International Investment Forum (TIIF), he was making the case for a relationship that, by his own government's admission, has barely existed for the past three decades.

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Argentina authorises $5bn in multilateral-backed debt

Hungary's Magyar makes push to remove president

India's Laxyo enters African underground mining market with $23mn contract at Zambia's Mopani copper mine

Argentina authorises $5bn in multilateral-backed debt

Argentina's government has authorised up to $5bn in new borrowing from international financial institutions, a move designed to lower the Treasury's funding costs by leaning on guarantees from multilateral lenders rather than tapping bond markets.

Hungary's Magyar makes push to remove president

Peter Magyar announced plans to remove President Tamas Sulyok through a constitutional amendment as part of a broader programme of political and institutional reform.

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News

A planned Turkey-Saudi railway linking the Gulf to Europe via Jordan and Syria is under technical assessment, with financing still to be weighed by respective governments.

The United States has temporarily lifted sanctions on Iran’s oil sector for 60 days, allowing the Islamic Republic to produce, sell and deliver crude oil and related products as Washington and Tehran press ahead with negotiations.

Maritime trade between the United Arab Emirates and Iran is returning to normal after the UAE agreed to resume accepting Iranian commercial vessels, sources in the Islamic Republic announced.

Iran and the United States have agreed a 60-day roadmap towards a final agreement and a high committee to oversee negotiations, in a joint statement at the close of the first round of talks in Switzerland.

Polish-Ukrainian relations have entered a deep crisis after Polish President Karol Nawrocki revoked Poland’s highest honour, the Order of the White Eagle, from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Tech

Uzbekistan's fintech sector is entering a new stage of development. Companies are seeking to build integrated digital ecosystems that combine banking, payments, lending and ecommerce.

Ambitious new legal jurisdiction is aimed at attracting international technology companies by utilising legal certainty and regulatory flexibility rather than tax incentives.

Russia’s largest e-commerce operator Wildberries became the largest retailer of any sort when it overtook MasterSport in 2019 and took Russia into a new age of e-commerce. Now it is expanding into Uzbekistan's fast growing economy.

Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, sanctioned banks have adopted "guerrilla" strategies to launch their apps on the App Store.

Hungary's e-commerce market grew 9.3% y/y in 2025 and was ten times larger than a decade ago, according to PwC's latest E-toplist ranking.

Opinion

If the last twelve months have taught the European Union anything, it is that it must now stand on its own two feet. As economic pressures mount in an increasingly polarized world order, the EU must breathe new life into its struggling businesses.

Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan secured a decisive election victory, resilient pro-Russian opposition could slow his efforts to advance peace with Azerbaijan and deepen ties with the West, says Carnegie Politika analysis.

Syria envisioned as key cog in new energy distribution network.

Relations across the Gulf have been ruined following more than 100 days of war between Iran, Israel and the US with the Gulf neighbours to the south and east of the Islamic Republic left exposed following a new memorandum with the Trump admin.

A planned EU-backed gas pipeline linking Bosnia & Herzegovina to Croatia could intensify political divisions within the country rather than easing its energy vulnerabilities.

Data

While Western central banks rely on adjusting benchmark interest rates to cool down hot domestic economies, the Monetary Authority of Singapore utilises the nominal effective exchange rate as its primary policy tool.

The Czech National Bank changed the main interest rate for the first time since May 2025.

Public support for European Union membership remains robust across much of the EU’s eastern neighbourhood, with Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova showing particularly high levels of trust and optimism.

Tourism from China fell for a sixth straight month, dropping 60.4% year on year to 313,000. The decline followed remarks last November by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi regarding Japan’s potential involvement in a Taiwan-related contingency

This local depreciation is not an isolated event, as the Malaysian currency has traded lower against a comprehensive basket of major global and regional peers.

Features

A draft law that would, for the first time, give Uzbekistan a functioning legal framework for private equity, venture capital and other alternative investment vehicles is now in its final stage of review by the Cabinet of Ministers.

In the space of six weeks this spring, Uzbekistan delivered two transactions that were gamechangers for the country’s image and starter’s guns for the privatisation process.

When Commerzbank opened its Tashkent office in 1998, Uzbekistan's economy stood at roughly $13bn. Last year it reached $145bn, having more than doubled from $60bn just nine years earlier.

When Lord Jason Stockwood, Britain's Minister of State for Investment, addressed an investor panel at the fifth Tashkent International Investment Forum (TIIF) in June, he was brimming with enthusiasm.

With the eruption of Lebanon's economic, financial, and monetary crisis in 2019, and the collapse of the long-standing exchange rate peg of 1,500 Lebanese pounds to the US dollar, the foreign exchange market descended into chaos.

Blogs

Prime Minister Edi Rama’s government has been targeted by a wave of mass protests dubbed the "Flamingo Revolution".

The E3 European leaders met in London over the weekend to thrash out a new formula to take to the Kremlin and end the war in Ukraine. Unfortunately, the document they produced takes us all the way back to the very beginning of the process.

What began as an environmental campaign against the planned development linked to Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner has rapidly evolved into a broader protest movement.

He’s passionate but ultimately dull. While he’s directing matters, the regime can happily go about dismantling the opposition.

German businessmen are going to the St Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), Russia’s premier investment forum, in a public show of the fraying commitment to cutting off commercial ties under the sanctions regime.

bneGREEN

Southern Vietnam's Ca Mau Province has begun construction of a nearly $95mn wind power project aimed at boosting renewable energy production and supporting long-term economic growth.

Most parts of India are facing unprecedented heatwave conditions. For several weeks, India’s capital, New Delhi, has been suffering under temperatures over 40 °C.

The Philippines’ Department of Energy has welcomed the certification of 13 renewable energy projects valued at PHP344.62bn ($5.7bn) under the government’s Green Lane initiative in the first five months of 2026.

Country's plans to expand agricultural production, industrial output and exports are running into an increasingly uncomfortable and stark reality.

The Baltic power system is undergoing structural change following the 2025 integration of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania into the continental European electricity grid.

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Nato General Secretary Mark Rutte warned that the West needs to prepare of the possibility that Chinese President Xi Jinping will ....

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