Business
Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan Sign $146M in Deals, Unveil $7.8B Roadmap at Aktau
July 26, 2026
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Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan sealed commercial agreements worth about 80 billion tenge, roughly $146 million, and adopted a $7.8 billion Investment and Trade Road Map on July 24 in the Caspian port city of Aktau, where prime ministers Olzhas Bektenov and Abdulla Aripov co-chaired the 23rd Joint Intergovernmental Commission. The two governments also convened an inaugural Council of Regional Leaders, signalling a push to move cooperation beyond capital-city diplomacy and into the provinces that actually build and ship goods.
The summit lands at a moment when Central Asia's two largest economies are stitching themselves ever more tightly to the Middle Corridor, the Trans-Caspian route that carries cargo from China across Kazakhstan and the Caspian Sea toward the South Caucasus and Europe. With sea lanes through the Red Sea disrupted and overland routes through Russia complicated by sanctions, Astana and Tashkent have a shared incentive to turn their border into a conduit rather than a bottleneck. The roadmap and the new regional council are attempts to give that ambition administrative teeth.
The numbers point to fast-deepening ties. Bilateral trade reached $4.8 billion in 2025, and turnover in the first five months of 2026 hit $2.3 billion, up 37 percent year on year. The two sides are advancing 80 joint industrial projects worth a combined $1.8 billion; of those, 15 projects valued at $227 million have already launched and created roughly 5,000 jobs, with six more worth $102 million under construction. Rail freight between the countries climbed 16 percent in 2025 to 32.3 million tons, and officials set a target of lifting railway corridor capacity from 35 million to 60 million tons, according to The Astana Times.
For investors and logistics operators, the transport metrics may matter most. Uzbek cargo moving through Kazakhstan's Aktau and Kuryk ports jumped more than 60 percent in 2025, feeding directly into Trans-Caspian volumes that have expanded several times over since 2022. Digital reforms are reinforcing the physical build-out: an e-permit system has compressed border-crossing times from around nine hours to 30 minutes, and permit issuance has risen more than tenfold over four years, per reporting by Caspian Post. Faster, more predictable transit lowers the cost of routing manufactured goods, agricultural produce and raw materials through the corridor, a calculation freight forwarders across the wider Caspian basin are watching closely.
The industrial pipeline suggests the partnership is meant to outlast a single summit. Alongside the 15 launched and six in-construction projects, another 59 ventures worth roughly $1.5 billion sit in preparation, spanning sectors from manufacturing to water-resource management and heritage tourism along the Fergana-Syrdarya corridor. The Council of Regional Leaders is designed to keep those deals from stalling in ministries by handing provincial governors a formal seat at the table.
Whether the $7.8 billion roadmap translates into realised capital will depend on execution over the coming years, but the trajectory is unmistakable. As Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan converge on shared rail, port and customs infrastructure, they are positioning the Middle Corridor as a more credible alternative for east-west trade, with knock-on demand for the Caspian shipping capacity and South Caucasus rail links that carry the same cargo onward toward European markets.
