Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) -- Rano Juraeva, Chairman of the Board of Uzbekistan Airports, spoke at the First Tashkent International Investment Forum, saying that the country’s airports will change dramatically in the coming years. They will become beautiful, modern, technologically advanced, and most importantly, comfortable for all categories of passengers.

During the panel discussion “Horizons for Attracting Investments in the Tourism Sector”, answering the question of how Uzbekistan has changed in recent years, Rano Juraeva noted that today the city and the country simply cannot be recognized.

“The country has changed, people have changed. And of course, I am very glad that Uzbekistan is developing at such a pace. Now it is difficult to name a country where development is proceeding at such a pace, where such large-scale reforms are being carried out. This is also felt in aviation. Serious shifts have taken place over the past 2-3 years. And of course, I really want to have time to modernize the industry, use both our own and world experience,” said Rano Juraeva, Chairman of the Board of Uzbekistan Airports.

According to Rano Juraeva, today demand is not met by supply in the aviation sector, it is much higher. If in 2019 there were only 300 thousand regional air passengers, now, despite the pandemic, there are about a million.

“Airports built back in Soviet times do not correspond to today. Terminals and airfields are not adapted to modern technologies and require urgent modernization, since they simply cannot accommodate the number of passengers that we have today,” Rano Juraeva said.

As the head of Uzbekistan Airports noted, in addition to Samarkand, projects for the modernization of two more airports, Bukhara and Urgench, will be presented in the near future. The approximate cost of the first initiative alone is about US$115 million. These projects are planned to be put up for tender this year.