What exists today?
Rules, responsible institutions, procedures, and which of them are already digital.
Why this assessment
Simpler, more transparent and digital zone services
An investor should understand where to go, what they will receive, how long it will take, and who is responsible for the result. The assessment starts there: it documents, country by country, what is in place, what is already digital and what each country wants to improve first, so that cooperation is built on evidence.
Opening address · Investment Forum, Tajikistan · 2026
“Our goal should be to ensure that when an investor comes to Central Asia, they see a single, clear, digital and competitive investment region.”
Yerbol BukharbayevHead of the Regional Office for Central Asia, World Free Zones Organization
The next stage for the region’s zones goes beyond tax incentives and infrastructure: zone services that are digital, integrated and internationally oriented. An investor passes through several procedures and institutions — land and buildings, connection costs, incentives, registration, customs — and each of them weighs on the decision. Digitalisation is not an objective in itself; it is one way of improving the investment environment.
Investors also tend to look at more than one country: production may take place in one, inputs may come from another and the logistics route may cross a third. That makes it increasingly useful to consider Central Asia as an interconnected investment region, where zones cooperate as well as compete.
What the assessment covers
Three questions
What needs to improve?
The main difficulties, priorities and opportunities for improvement.
What is underway?
Reforms, initiatives and partnerships already at work, to build on rather than duplicate.
After the assessment
Possible areas
of cooperation
The assessment will not prescribe a single solution. Depending on the needs identified, possible areas of cooperation could include greater transparency, simpler procedures, digital services and regulatory improvement. Where digitalisation is chosen, the useful order is to document a procedure, simplify it, then put it online: digitising a procedure nobody has simplified only makes it faster to get wrong.
Transparency
Where a country sees the need, possible assistance could help document each procedure from the user’s point of view: steps, required documents, costs, processing times, legal basis and responsible authority, kept up to date by that authority.
Simplification
Depending on the needs identified, possible assistance could help review steps and requirements that no longer serve a clear purpose, and clarify which authority is responsible for each action.
Digitalisation
Where appropriate, and once procedures have been simplified, possible assistance could help turn them into online services for applications, approvals, payments and renewals. UNCTAD’s eRegistrations platform is one option among others, subject to country priorities and capacity.
Better regulation
If a country asks for it, possible assistance could look at the zone law from two perspectives: what the country offers investors, and what it expects from them. Where the legal system allows, detailed procedures could sit in regulations rather than in the law itself, so services improve without amending the law. A model regulation to consider adapting is being prepared. Explore the regulatory approach →
