Uzbekistan is planning to introduce a wholesale electricity market by 2025. Such a market, if competitive, would improve the management of the electricity industry and reduce state ownership, the Uzbek Energy Ministry said on June 15.

The transition is designed to take place in three stages, the ministry added.

Firstly, state electricity companies will face liberalisation. Private companies will be allowed to obtain licences to sell electricity.

Later, in the second stage, an operator of the electricity distribution system will be created. The functions behind the selling of electricity to consumers will gradually be transferred to suppliers with licences to sell.

In the final stage, the government will launch an intraday electricity trading platform. It will allow surplus or deficit volumes of hourly production and consumption of electricity to be traded online.

The energy ministry also stated that power generation is to be doubled by 2030. The government aims to produce 120.1 billion kWh by 2030 versus 66.4bn kWh in 2020.

“The final goal of the paramount reforms projected in the power industry is to ensure that economies as a whole, businesses, and households will get quality power when they need it and, in the quality, that they need it in, as many businesses work with the assumption that there will be no power outages,” Bakhrom Umarbekov, deputy director of the Project Office of the Energy Ministry told Uzreport TV.  

Umarbekov added: “And the competitiveness of the market that we will create will ensure the price stability. This is very important because we don’t want prices to run out of control. They should be in a stable range and there should be sufficient competition so there will be no monopoly”. 

Umarbekov also said that the government was working with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Asian Development Bank (ADB) to create new capacities.