Economy in Uzbekistan? Sounds new to me!

Hi there followers! I'm Jens, and I'm one of the students doing a trip around (a part of) the world. The first country I'm going to talk about is Uzbekistan, and more specifically the economy of Uzbekistan.

Even though it sounds a bit unbelievable, Uzbekistan's economy is a rather interesting subject. They've been a part of the communistic USSR, and are now still building a new and better economical system, and they're doing quite well. The national currency of Uzbekistan is the UZS (Uzbekistani Som). One UZS is worth around 0.0004 euro's, or the other way round, 1 euro is worth 2435 Soms, which is not very impressive, I think! For us, tourists, the lower changing rate of the Som is better: our stay and our expenses are quite low, so we don't have to worry about our money too much when visiting places.

Their GDP is growing, so that's a good thing. In 2008 it was $72.55 billion (just to give you an idea: Belgiums GDP was $381.4 billion in 2009. So their economy is still rising, and they still have a long way to go, but if they pull trough, I think it may be possible to have a good future. The most important sectors in the economy of Uzbekistan are services, industry and construction and agriculture.

There's a lot of unemployment in Uzbekistan: 20 % of the people doesn't have a job. In Belgium, that's only 8 %. Because of the high number of unemployment, there's also a lot of people ling below the poverty line. 33 % to precise, so they still have a lot of work to do with their economy.

I think I've said the most important things about the economy of Uzbekistan, so that's it for me, for now! I hope it was a bit interesting, and that you'll come back here to read more of our posts from the road from Tajikistan to Iceland!

Have a nice day!

Jens

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uzbekistani_economy