Address by Mr. Shavkat Mirziyoyev, President of the Republic of Uzbekistan to Oliy Majlis.

Esteemed Senators and Deputies!

Dear compatriots!

Dear guests!

Allow me to deliver you the Address of the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan to Parliament on the most priority goals of Uzbekistan's development in 2019.

Today, we are living in the rapidly changing world. Global conflicts of interests and competition are growing. The international situation is being aggravated.

Accordingly, while planning practical actions for the next year, considering such harsh situation on the international arena, we need to highlight clearly and precisely the priority directions of our development.

Dear friends!

Traditionally, with good intentions, we dedicate every year to something and set high ambitions for ourselves.

There is a deep meaning in the hadith mentioned in the book by our great compatriot Hazrat Imam Bukhariy, which goes: "Every good action depend on the will, every person will be granted solely what he wills".

We have named the year 2018 to be "The Year of Support of Active Entreprenuership, Innovative Ideas and Technologies". Within the State Program we have implemented 76 thousand projects worth of 21 trillion soums (currency rates of CB RU from 28.12.2018, 1$= 8 339.55 soums) and 1 billion US Dollars. And we are now witnessing the outcomes of actions initiated last year with good will.

Tangible achievements have been reached in the fields of industry, agriculture, major construction, transport and communications, services.

In particular, I would like to especially highlight selfless work of our diligent dekhkans and farmers despite the fact that this season was very difficult compared to other years.

In view of increasing the population's well being, the rates of wages, stipends, retirement and social benefits were notably increased versus previous years. In particular, for the first time for the last 10 years, the wages of teaching staff were increased by up to 50 percent.

The implementation of package of measures allowed a 12-percent increase of cumulative real income of population in relation to that of 2017.

The Government has appropriated funds worth of nearly 2 trillion soums within Programs "Every Family is Entrepreneur" and "The Youth is Our Future". As such, more than 2,600 (two thousand six hundred) local business projects have implemented.

Starting from this year, out of the fulfillment from projected tax parameters, additional 5.5 trillion soums have been retained at local budgets.

And this is 6 times more than that of the previous year, while versus 2016, I would like to draw your attention to this fact, 32 times more.

Dear compatriots!

The year coming to an end became the year of start of great deeds in landscaping of villages and makhallas (neighborhood areas), which represent the symbol of our sacred Homeland.

In particular, the programs "Prosperous village" and "Prosperous makhalla" have been welcomed by our people with profound joy. This year, 3 trillion soums have been allocated for construction and landscaping works within this context.

As a result, 416 villages got new image.

During the expiring year, important steps were made in other fields of our life, in particular, in development of education and science, training and up-bringing, culture and arts, sports. Especially, we all were pleased of the fact that the youth of our country achieved high scores at Asia Olympic and Paralympics held in Indonesia and Olympic Games for Juniors held in Argentina.

Dear members of the Parliament!

Thanks to open, pragmatic and active foreign policy pursued in international relations our country's international reputation to be reliable partner is increasing. Strenghtening good-neighborly and mutually trustworthy relations with all our neighbors became one of our targets.

In 2018 we exchanged 18 official inter-state visits and signed agreements on one thousand eighty projects totaling 52 billion dollars.

The investment portfolio of partnerships with the World Bank, EBRD, IDB, ADB and other international finance institutions comprised 8,5 billion dollars.

Today, our country is implementing 456 projects with foreign investments worth of 23 billion dollars.

Considerig increasing threats to international and regional security, we have adopted new Defense Doctrine.

We have revised the structures and the missions of all types of troops in the Armed Forces.

To ensure the unity of the army and the people, military administrative sectors have been created in all regions.

Certainly, we could continue a long list of all activities implemented during the year. Though, however, the purpose of citing such examples is not clapping on our chests and boasting ourselves. We are absolutely far from this. Our main goal is giving objective and critical assesment to our development path during the past year.

Taking this advantage, I would like to express sincere gratitude to our noble people for their constant support to implementation of reforms and tremendous contribution to prosperity of our Homeland through their selfless work and overcoming courageously all challenges and hardships.

Esteemed participants of the meeting!

In just a few days, the New Year 2019 will come. On the eve of the New Year, according to our tradition, it would be good to exchange with you and come to common decision with regards to what name we should give to 2019.

Certainly, we have been thinking a lot about this. We made thorough review of proposed ideas and requests, proposals and recommendations during dialogue with people at local levels.

The international experience demonstrates that those countries, which pursue active investment policy, succeed in steady growth of their economies.

It is therefore, it will not be an exxageration to say that investments are driving engine of country's economy, or "it's the heart of economy" to say it in Uzbek.

Investments bring modern technologies, advanced experiences and skilled expertise to different fields and regions, facilitate development of businesses.

Here, the question arises: we say "investments", we say "reforms", we say "modernization".

But, what is the main goal of all transformations?

Our main goal is to ensure that every signle individual living in our country, irrespective of ethnicity, language and religion, lives free, peaceful and wealthy life, being satisfied of today's life.

In this direction, we have great tasks ahead. Primarily, prosperity of our country and well being of our people are closely linked with the success of our social reforms.

We need to provide worthy education to our youth, bring to reality their endeavors for education and science. In this view, we need to develop preschool education system, we must radically improve material and technical base of secondary and higher education institutions, the quality of education and academic process.

Improving health of our people and building up healthy life-style are vital tasks for us. I would like to re-iterate, if we ensure peace and health, all the rest is achievable. Certainly, we maintain as priority goal supporting and helping people with disabilities, with lost breadwinners, lone elderly, in general, all those who need help.

In the forthcoming year, we still need to do a lot to build up even more enabling business and investment environment, creating new jobs, increasing livelihoods of our population, improving pension support.

Considering all above, to make logical follow-up of activities launched in 2018 and raising it to higher level, I propose to name the New Year 2019 "The Year of Active Investment and Social Development".

Dear friends!

Giving the year such a name, lays many tasks and responsibilities on our shoulders. We are facing following questions: how to increase investments, how to address social issues.

And our people watching us on the television have the right to ask us these questions.

If we don't start to work today on solving these issues, if we don't mobilize all our efforts and capacities, it will be difficult to reach the target.

Every leader - whether he is a minister or the head of central authority, deputy or senator, chairman of company or association, khokim of the province or district - all of us must consider this work to be the primary mission.

We can achieve sustainable development of our economy only through active attraction of investments, launch of new production capacities.

While positive achievements in the economy will create foundation to find system solution to problems accumulated in the social field. We need to deeply realize this and need to organize our work in this context.

Dear compatriots!

Speaking about the tasks facing the sphere of economy, first of all, we need to highlight that the following goals are the core of comprehensive economic reforms:

- creating necessary conditions for open economy, sound competition, radical improvement of business and investment environment;

- increasing creation of new jobs through reduction of participation of state in the economy, intensive development of private sector;

- ensuring high economic growth through modernization and diversification of economy, increasing labor efficiency;

- countering "shadow" economy, diminishing it's share;

- consistently continuing the policy of further liberalization of exchange market, pursuing steady monetary policy;

- educating skilled human resourses capable of implementing strategic tasks related to development of economy.

To achieve these goals, it's required to implement following priority tasks.

First, we must ensure macroeconomic stability and high growth rates of our economy.

Without prior adjustment of inflation, we cannot achieve macroeconomic stability.

Through thorough analysis of international experiences and attraction of international experts, we need to develop the concept on optimizing monetary policy and ensuring sustainable pricing.

During transition period, it is extremely important to run clear statistics of the economy and to make right assessment of economic...