Uzbekistan Deploys AI Platform to Halve Shadow Economy by 2030
Uzbekistan plans to reduce its shadow economy by half and push the share of cashless payments to 75% by 2030. These targets were presented to President Shavkat Mirziyoyev during a briefing focused on combating the country’s unregulated economic sectors.
According to the Central Bank the republic is already making steady progress. By early May of this year the proportion of cashless transactions had risen to 47% compared to 43% during the same period last year. Over the past two years the country’s unobserved economy has also shrunk from 35% down to 23%.
Despite these recent improvements the presidential press service warned that the shadow economy remains problematically high. Statistical estimates for the first quarter of this year highlight massive volumes of unrecorded financial activity across several major industries:
- Agriculture: 81.1 trln soums ($6.75 bn)
- Trade and services: 24.5 trln soums ($2.04 bn)
- Construction: 23.9 trln soums ($1.99 bn)
- Industry: 6.7 trln soums ($558 mln)
The «Shadow Economy Map»
To aggressively tackle these revenue leaks officials presented the President with a new digital platform dubbed the «Shadow Economy Map». Powered by artificial intelligence and integrated with existing state information systems the tool is designed to replenish the national budget and support fair market competition.
The platform will actively hunt for illicit financial operations across more than 20 economic sectors encompassing all regions and 208 specific districts and cities.
Based on the data collected the system will divide various industries and regions into green, yellow and red categories. These classifications depend entirely on the assessed risk level of shadow activities and the estimated amount of money the state budget is losing as a result.
Automated detection and enforcement
The AI-driven system is designed to automatically flag potential corporate violations. It will be capable of identifying businesses that are operating without a valid licence, hiding their true sales volumes, underreporting staff numbers and wage bills and artificially lowering their reported profits and overall profitability.
The platform will not only highlight economic infractions but also analyse the root causes behind them. Once an issue is identified the system will issue specific corrective tasks to the relevant government departments and strictly monitor their execution. If a problem cannot be resolved at the local district or city level it will be automatically escalated to regional authorities or the national government if necessary.
