President Shavkat Mirziyoyev on Nov. 2 set a target of raising annual remittances from abroad to $50 billion, telling a meeting on labor migration that current opportunities are not being used effectively and state policy must be fundamentally overhauled.

Migrants now send more than $20 billion a year, he said, even though the number of Uzbeks working abroad has halved over the past decade while remittances grew fourfold.

“Today the state has nothing to do with the $20 billion in remittances our migrants send. They achieved everything on their own, alone,” Mirziyoyev said. “I will not back down until we bring this figure to $50 billion.”

He criticized ambassadors, hokims (governors) and heads of technical schools, saying only the hokim of Kashkadarya province, who visited Germany in person, had achieved concrete results in signing agreements with recruitment companies.

Mirziyoyev said migrants should earn at least $2,000 abroad, and that wages of $400 “wound my pride.” He said young people should leave school speaking at least one foreign language and holding a profession. About 200,000 young people hold English-language certificates, but their employment prospects in English-speaking countries are not being fully used, he said.

He said embassies should help citizens find jobs and support them until they adapt to a new workplace. Hokims were instructed to look after migrants’ families, their parents’ living conditions and their children’s education.

“We once vilified these people,” Mirziyoyev said of migrants. “But we never asked ourselves: what conditions did we create for them?”

Remittances from abroad reached $18.9 billion in 2025, up 28%, according to the Central Bank. In January-June 2026, they totaled $9.3 billion, up 13% year on year, with the sharpest growth from Britain (62%), European Union countries (27%) and the United States (19%).

In April, the president was told that about 1.2 million citizens work in nearly 40 countries.