Uzbekistan's total external debt reached $84.1 billion as of July 1, 2026, up $11.9 billion, or 16.5%, from a year earlier, according to a Central Bank review. A year earlier, the figure stood at $72.2 billion.
Most of the increase came in the second half of 2025. Since the start of this year, external debt has risen by about $1.9 billion, or 2.3%, from $82.2 billion on Jan. 1.
Public external debt rose 13.3% over the year, from $36.8 billion to $41.7 billion. Corporate external debt grew 19.8%, from $35.4 billion to $42.4 billion. Since the start of the year, the two categories have risen by about $1.2 billion and $700 million, respectively.
The Central Bank clarified that corporate external debt covers private-sector borrowing, including by companies and banks, raised without a government guarantee. The state has no obligations on this debt, and repayments are made from borrowers' own funds.
The calculation of public external debt includes accrued but unpaid interest, and sovereign Eurobonds are revalued at market prices on the reporting date.
Debt burden falls despite rise in external debt
Economist Mirkomil Kholboyev noted that the nominal rise in debt has come alongside a decline in its ratio to the size of the economy.
By his calculations, total external debt stood at 48.5% of gross domestic product at the end of the second quarter, down 4.4 percentage points from the first quarter.
The ratio peaked at 55.9% in the fourth quarter of 2025. It has since fallen for two consecutive quarters, and by the end of June it had dropped a total of 7.4 percentage points.
Kholboyev attributed the trend to the dollar value of the economy growing faster than external debt. Real economic growth accelerated to 8.5% in the first half of the year, from 7.2% a year earlier.
A stronger soum was an additional factor. By the economist's estimate, the average exchange rate used to convert the economy into dollars in the second quarter of 2026 was about 5% stronger than a year earlier, which lifts the dollar estimate of the economy's size.
Kholboyev based his calculation on economic output over the past four quarters and the average exchange rate for the same period.
If current rates of economic growth and borrowing hold and the average exchange rate does not change significantly, he estimates that the ratio of total external debt to the economy could fall to about 45% by the end of the second quarter of 2027.
"Despite fairly rapid growth in nominal debt, the country's income is now growing faster than its debt. As a result, the debt burden is shrinking," the economist said.
The Central Bank's review also cites an International Monetary Fund assessment that Uzbekistan's debt burden remains low and that a significant share of its external debt was raised on concessional terms.
