Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) -- Today, when economic instability is observed throughout the world, production activities are directly related to foreign countries; such instability may negatively affect the growth of vulnerability of regions with a high contribution of foreign trade in their economy. 

In particular, due to the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, the interregional difference in the country’s economy in terms of GRP per capita increased by 25% compared to 2019, and by 17% in industrial production. Despite the fact that in 2021 this gap decreased by 3% and 11%, respectively, in the current unpredictable conditions, forecasting the integrated development of territories in the future, as well as developing specific measures aimed at preventing an increase in interregional differentiation, becomes relevant.

The inter-regional difference means the ratio of the highest and lowest values of the indicator by region.

An analysis of the reduction of inter-regional differences in the regional economy in the period 2016-2021 and their approach to a stable state was carried out using the beta convergence model (β-convergence). According to this neoclassical model of economic growth, if the only difference between regions is their basic level of capital, then poor regions with little capital will experience accelerated economic growth than rich regions with a high concentration of capital. This means that the imbalance between regions is decreasing, which in turn indicates a reduction in interregional imbalance.

Whichever country is considered, its capital (large cities) has a number of advantages in terms of the scale of economic development in comparison with other territories. In view of the leading position in the economy of Uzbekistan, the city of Tashkent can also be considered as the main source of interregional disparities. At the same time, the economic potential of the capital has a positive effect on the economic indicators of the Tashkent region. They account for 35.7% of consumer goods, 44.9% of services, 27.8% of GDP produced in the country. Based on this, with the exclusion of the city of Tashkent and the Tashkent region from the convergence model, the results of interregional differences become more obvious. Given the above, the analysis of conditional beta convergence in the study was carried out in three options: for 14 regions of the republic (model 1), excluding Tashkent city (model 2), excluding Tashkent city and Tashkent region (model 3).

All three variants of the conditional beta convergence model indicate that the regions of Uzbekistan are approaching an economically sustainable state and reducing disparities between them. It was revealed that the development of border areas has a positive effect on economic growth; the implementation of fiber-optic communication lines contributes to bringing the level of development of the territories closer to the most economically developed ones. At the same time, the exclusion of the most developed regions from the model reduces the significance of the latter factor.

The Halflife indicator, calculated for 14 regions, showed that it would take 35 years to reduce inter-regional differentiation by 50%, with the option of excluding the city of Tashkent and the Tashkent region - 25 years.

As a result of the study, it was concluded that it is necessary to determine the directions of territorial policy and develop appropriate measures, taking into account the factors of proximity to the territorial geographical location and the similarity of the economic development of the regions. For example, the pattern of beta convergence showed that Surkhandarya, Samarkand and Kashkadarya regions are close territories not only geographically, but also in terms of economic growth. Similarly, for geographically close Andijan, Namangan and Ferghana regions, similar in terms of economic growth rates to Khorezm, Bukhara and Navoi regions, it is advisable to indicate the general directions of their development in the future.