Dear Sergey Vadimovich,
Distinguished colleagues,
First of all, allow me to warmly welcome all participants and guests of today's roundtable, and to thank our Russian partners for supporting the initiative to hold this event.
Today's meeting is being held jointly with the Gorchakov Fund — our long-standing partner. It is especially gratifying to see among the participants friends of our Institute — experts and colleagues who have taken part in our joint discussions on many occasions.
I would note that this is a special year for IICA — we are marking the fifth anniversary of our founding. We know that our Russian partners are celebrating anniversaries of their own as well: IMEMO is turning 70, and the Institute of China and Contemporary Asia, 60. Taking this opportunity, I would like to sincerely congratulate our colleagues on these notable milestones.
Distinguished participants,
Relations between Uzbekistan and Russia are intensive, multifaceted, and strategic in character. They span regular political dialogue; economic, investment, energy, and transport cooperation; and humanitarian and educational ties.
Just two weeks ago, the President of Uzbekistan took part in the May 9 commemorative events in Moscow, which once again confirmed the high level of political engagement and the shared historical foundation of our relations.
At the same time, despite such close interconnectedness, we cannot overlook global trends — including the processes directly linked to the transformation of labor markets, rising demand for a skilled workforce, and the need to adapt education systems to new economic realities.
According to McKinsey, around 44% of employers already face a shortage of skilled workers, and nearly half of all organizations expect this gap to widen in the coming years. The World Economic Forum projects that by 2030, up to 39% of workers will need to update their skills or reskill.
In other words, a new reality is taking shape — one in which the key resource is not simply labor, but continuously updated qualifications.
For Uzbekistan, this challenge is particularly acute. The country has a young demographic profile: a significant share of the population — 60% — is young people entering the labor market each year. This represents both a powerful asset and a source of pressure on the employment and education systems.
Under these conditions, the role of the workforce training system grows sharply in importance, and it must be closely aligned with the needs of the economy.
Branch campuses of Russian universities in Uzbekistan play a particular role here. While in the early 2000s the country had just one such campus — the Plekhanov Russian University of Economics — today there are 15, with more than 10,000 students enrolled. Russian education also remains one of the most sought-after options: more than 60,000 citizens of Uzbekistan are studying at universities in Russia.
The key question, however, lies not only in access to education, but in its effectiveness — how well current education programs match the needs of the economy, and to what extent graduates are equipped for practical demand and integration into the economic system.
An equally important dimension in this context is labor migration, which remains a significant socioeconomic phenomenon. For Uzbekistan, employment abroad is both a source of household income and a factor of balance in the labor market.
At the same time, the structure of migration remains rather vulnerable: around 95% of labor migrants from Uzbekistan are employed in low- and medium-skilled segments. The main flow of labor migration is directed to the Russian Federation, which remains the key employment market for citizens of Uzbekistan — more than 1 million migrants from Uzbekistan are currently in Russia. Estimates cited at the Valdai forum put the number of people from Central Asia in Russia as high as 6 million.
This means there is a growing, objective need to raise qualification levels, strengthen language and professional training prior to departure, and reinforce systems of pre-departure education and skills certification.
In other words, migration increasingly calls not only for managing flows, but also for managing the quality of human capital.
We are therefore dealing with a complex system of interconnected processes. This is precisely why today's discussion is structured into three thematic sessions:
- Labor market needs and the development of higher education in Uzbekistan: building workforce capacity through branch campuses of Russian universities. Here it is essential to discuss how well the current educational trajectory matches the structural changes in the economy and the requirements of the future labor market.
- Models of cooperation between businesses and educational institutions: training mid-level specialists for Russian investment projects in Uzbekistan. In this session, we consider it important to focus on the mechanisms that link education and the production sector in practice.
- Education and migration: preparatory centers as a tool for managing labor migration in Russia–Uzbekistan cooperation. The key emphasis here is on improving the quality of pre-departure training and aligning competencies with the requirements of external labor markets.
The roundtable brings together representatives of government bodies and the expert community, which gives us reason to expect a substantive and practical discussion.
I am confident that today we will be able not only to exchange assessments, but also to develop concrete proposals and a shared vision for the further development of cooperation in this area.
I wish all participants productive and substantive work.
Thank you for your attention.
