He was speaking at a festive event devoted to the 16th anniversary of the Uzbek Constitution held in Tashkent on 5 December.

In his speech, Karimov spoke about the effects of the global financial crisis and said: "While carrying out economic reforms, we took our long-term and constant national interests into consideration, and could timely reject the attempts from outside to impose the methods of ’shock therapy’ on us, as well as very naive and deceptive concepts about the self-regulating nature of the market economy."

He went on to praise Uzbekistan’s economic policy and said: "The methods of government control were applied to the economy in situations when our country’s long-term and constant interests required and when we needed to overcome critical situations and resolve the problems emerging from these situations. And finally, such approach has completely justified itself. We have all grounds to say that the development model we have chosen and the well-thought policy being carried out to reform, modernize, technically and technologically renovate Uzbekistan, as well as to diversify the economy is currently yielding its results. And this policy is serving as a strong and reliable protection to safeguard our country from various negative processes and effects of crises".

Karimov also stressed that Uzbekistan had all resources to guarantee the stable work of the economic and financial systems in Uzbekistan.