Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) -- The European Bureau of the Poverty Action Laboratory Abdul Latif Jamil (J-PAL Europe) named Uzbekistan the country of the month. J-PAL Europe wrote about this on their official Twitter page.

“Our focus shifted to Uzbekistan in May, where -PAL Europe is exploring opportunities to bring evidence to bear on poverty alleviation policies in Uzbekistan,” the J-PAL European Bureau said in a statement.

Since the beginning of the year, three countries have been announced by the J-PAL European Bureau as the countries of the month, these are Italy, Germany and Spain.

J-PAL is a global research center to combat poverty. Created in 2003, based on MIT. It has 7 regional offices in leading universities in Europe, Africa, South and North America, the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia.

The core staff of J-PAL includes more than 400 specialists. Operates in close cooperation with about 300 affiliated professors around the world. During the entire existence of the laboratory, 1094 studies have been conducted in 91 countries.

The fight against poverty and the organization of social protection are in the center of attention of the state policy of Uzbekistan, where over the past 5 years the country has done a lot of work in this direction.

Uzbekistan has begun active work to combat poverty and is developing comprehensive approaches to overcome it. The reform agenda in the past two years has been adjusted to respond to the negative impacts caused by the pandemic. A comprehensive government policy to reduce poverty and improve social protection was also accelerated by external shocks.

In May last year, J-PAL, founded by Nobel Prize winners Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, together with the CERR, organized a seminar to assist in the development and testing of innovative approaches in cooperation with the government of Uzbekistan to improve the effectiveness of state programs to combat poverty.

At this stage, J-PAL and CERR are starting a study to evaluate the effectiveness of the first of the government programs aimed at combating poverty and their potential impact on real income growth and poverty reduction.

Experts are considering the possibility of developing and implementing advanced tools for evaluating the effectiveness of such programs as “Every Family is an Entrepreneur” through the “Mahallabay” system and the activities of the “Ishga Markhamat” monocenters, incl. effectiveness of labor migration programs.

This culture of evaluating the effectiveness of government programs is being introduced for the first time in Uzbekistan, which will be an important step in the development of future programs and strategies aimed at simultaneously addressing many aspects of poverty.

In 2021, in the Global Go To Think Tank Index Report ranking of the best think tanks, the Center for Economic Research and Reform took 10th place among 63 best research and analytical institutions in Central Asia and the Caucasus. Thus, the CERR moved up one line compared to the previous year, and improved the performance of 2016 by three positions (then the Center took 13th place).

The Center for Economic Research was transformed into the Center for Economic Research and Reform in October 2019 on the twentieth anniversary of its formation. At the same time, new goals and objectives were approved, including the conduct of analytical and applied research in order to develop deeply developed proposals on strategic directions for deepening socio-economic reforms, taking into account the practices successfully tested in developed foreign countries.