India, Uzbekistan may open up visa regime

The Financial Express October 31 India and Uzbekistan are keen to liberalise the visa regime between the two countries in order to facilitate trade and encourage more people to people contacts. This was informed by Uzbek foreign minister Sodik S Safoev at an interactive session organised by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) on Saturday. The minister explained that this would be one of the key issues for discussion at the proposed India-Uzbekistan summit early next year. He said that the issue had come up for discussion when he had called on external affairs minister K Natwar Singh on Friday evening. The visiting minister also said that Uzbekistan was scouting for keen Indian investors and hoped that the country’s proposed international transport through Afghanistan to the Indian ports would give a boost to the bilateral trade. “Hopefully our initiative to create the corridor would be materialised soon and will break our dependence on the existing communications systems by connecting Uzbekistan and large central Asian market with India,” Mr Safoev said. The proposed corridors from Uzbekistan and Mazar-e-Sharif will connect Herat, Dogarun, Delaram or Milak in Afghanistan to Iranian ports and further on to Ahmedabad and Mumbai in India. He added that there were ample opportunities for the Indian entrepreneurs in the field of oil exploration, automobiles and textiles. “Production of bicycles and scooters in Uzbekistan is zero but the demand is very high. We can successfully have Indian companies investing in the sector there,” he said. On the opportunities in oil sector, he said that there were 168 oil fields in Uzbekistan and not all of them were in the production process.