Regulatory sandbox special legal regime shall be introduced in Uzbekistan from January 1, 2023. It provides for special regulation of the activities of business entities-legal entities to test new products and services or the products of other intellectual activity based on modern technologies in a controlled limited environment in certain areas (a list of them will be published later).

This is provided for by the Nov. 9 presidential decree on the simplification of state regulation of doing business. As reported earlier, this decree established the limits of state regulatory tools of business.

Within the special legal regime introduced at the proposal of the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Economic Development and Poverty Reduction and the Ministry for the Development of Information Technologies and Communications, business entities are allowed:

• not to comply with the norms of certain acts of legislation through special regulation due to limited time, territory and persons in the areas of production, testing and implementation of new products and services;
• to carry out activities without licensing and passing through licensing procedures, with the exception of licenses and permit documents containing state secrets and information, access to which is restricted in accordance with the law.

The special legal regime shall be introduced on the basis of an agreement entered into separately for each project between the authorized body and the initiator. Wherein:

• the agreement defines the requirements and terms for the project implementation, including the terms, territory and circle of persons, a list of regulations that do not apply to the initiator, as well as the evaluation criteria (indicators) of the project results;
• the longest timeline of the special legal regime for each project is three years.

As a result of the special legal regime, the relevant authorized body within a month:

• analyzes the feasibility of introducing proven products and services;
• if it is expedient to introduce products and services, it develops proposals for improving legislative acts.

Based on the findings of the analysis of projects for which the “Regulatory Sandbox” regime has been introduced, a draft Special legal regime bill should be developed by 2025.