On the evening of March 11, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev reviewed proposals for improving the system of conducting expert assessments of projects. This was reported by the press service of the head of state.
It was noted that this year, it is planned to attract over 50 billion dollars in investment to the regions and sectors of our country's economy, allocate 24 trillion soums of budget funds for the construction of social and infrastructure facilities, as well as purchase goods, works, and services worth over 300 trillion soums within the framework of state procurement.
In implementing projects of such large scale, the efficient and high-quality operation of their expert assessment system is of great importance.
At the same time, it was noted that the current procedure does not fully meet these requirements and is causing serious complaints from entrepreneurs and investors.
For example, last year, some of the 7,750 documents submitted for expert review were considered over long periods. In some cases, projects were sent back for revision several times due to minor shortcomings that were not of significant importance.
Therefore, by the President's decree, the Center for Comprehensive Expertise of Projects and Import Contracts was transferred to the newly established Agency for Industrial Cooperation and State Procurement, and tasks for transforming its activities were set.
The presentation reviewed problems in the field and developed proposals for their elimination.
It was noted that due to the lack of digitalization and a risk-analysis approach in the Center's activities, the operational workload per employee has increased. Although 130 employees work at the Center, each employee handles an average of one project every two days because high-risk and strategically important projects are not separated from others.
A large part of the documents submitted for expert review consists of projects with relatively small values. Also, although many documents are similar to previously reviewed projects, they are being reviewed again in full. This leads to excessive time and resource consumption, it was noted.
The presentation proposed introducing advanced experience and practices into the Center's activities.
In particular, a proposal was made to implement a tiered procedure for reviewing projects based on the level of risk and value. According to it, in the preliminary examination of project documents, technical specifications are not reviewed; only corporate and budget projects valued above 15 million dollars are reviewed.
Initiatives were put forward for conducting parallel expert reviews of large and mega-projects, reviewing projects similar to previous ones under an accelerated procedure, conducting simplified expert reviews for physically and morally obsolete equipment, and applying the benchmarking method.
This will optimize the expert review process and allow the Center to focus its main attention on large investment projects of strategic importance.
The presentation also considered issues of implementing incentive mechanisms for participants in the expert review process.
For example, measures such as incentivizing customers if a positive conclusion is obtained at the first stage or if objections regarding the project are resolved ahead of schedule, accelerating expert review processes, and providing discounts were proposed.
Special attention was also paid to the issue of digitalizing the Center's activities. For this purpose, a unified information platform integrated with the databases of tax and customs authorities, the national statistics system, ecology and climate data, as well as the national classifier of construction resources and state procurement electronic systems will be created.
Through this platform, documents related to projects will be formed online, and the prices and technical indicators of goods and services will be analyzed with the help of artificial intelligence.
Our head of state emphasized that project expertise is an important link in the investment climate and gave relevant instructions to officials to reduce excessive bureaucratic barriers in this area, digitalize processes, and improve quality and speed.
