20.07.2020

President Shavkat Mirziyoyev has been presented projects reflecting the current reforms in the architectural and construction sector.

In Uzbekistan, construction works have been growing in scale of late. Urbanization is well underway across the country. The creative endeavors are in full swing in rural areas, too.

This requires improving regulations in the industry, ensuring transparency, and developing the mortgage market based on new requirements. Over the past three years, the President has adopted about 40 normative acts on these issues.

For instance, the 13 March 2020 presidential decree outlined measures to enhance reforms in the construction sector, thwart bureaucratic barriers, secure transparency at all stages of the process, and widely use innovative developments and cutting-edge information technologies.

The Ministry of Construction has been tasked with updating 60 out of 337 urban planning rules and regulations this year. Earlier, the Ministry established a Center for Technical Regulation in Construction, with 15 qualified specialists employed. At present, 33 new norms and rules in urban planning have been devised.

Shavkat Mirziyoyev urged the industry officials to attract a foreign company with advanced experience to accelerate efforts on this front.

The President pointed to cases of corruption and the ‘shadow economy’ in the sphere, stressed the need to digitize the process of holding tenders for construction and selecting out contractors.

Today, there are 32 thousand construction companies operating in the country. Thus, the task was set to launch a single platform that would include information on financial performance, the solvency of construction organizations, their participation in public procurement and personnel qualifications. The platform is to be implemented by November 1 in Tashkent and from the start of the next year – throughout the nation. It will be integrated with the electronic work record system.

As analysis suggests, over the past two years, within the framework of government programs, bids were held for only 182 construction projects out of more than three thousand. Due to the complexity of bidding procedures, the priority is given to low cost, while the competence of the construction organization fades into the background.

In this respect, starting from next year, funds will be assigned to construction companies included in the new information system and the corresponding rating.

A separate resolution was adopted to improve the authors’, technical and state supervision in the field of construction, and everything essential for this was delivered. It was noted that now it is crucial to shift from manual regulation to the one that uses information technologies.

Responsible executives were instructed to form a database of construction enterprises and facilities within a month.

From August 1 this year in the city of Tashkent, and from next year in all other regions, supervisory processes will be automated with the introduction of all identified deficiencies with photographic fixation into the online platform.

An interactive system will be launched that would allow construction companies and citizens to receive comprehensive information at any time about the procedure and terms of construction.

The President stressed the need to translate all the norms and rules of urban planning into electronic form, digitalize the processes of examination of design estimates and store expert opinions in a single database.

These measures will reduce the time for issuing building permits from 254 to 84 days, reduce the number of licensing procedures from 17 to 5, and the time spent by citizens by 67 percent.

Officials in charge reported on the work carried out currently to digitize the construction industry, ensure its transparency, and upgrade urban planning rules and regulations.