Aziz Abdukhakimov

Aziz Abdukakharovich Abdukhakimov was born on 17 June 1974 in Tashkent. He studied economics at the Tashkent State University of Economics and took a master's degree at Hitotsubashi University in Japan.

He began his career in 1993 at the Ipak Yuli bank and worked in banking until 2004: as chief economist of the Central Bank of Uzbekistan, consultant to the Tashkent office of Berliner Bank AG, and head of a department and a division at Uzpromstroybank. In 2004–2008 he was deputy head of a government-apparatus department for the economy and foreign economic relations.

In 2008 he became first deputy chairman of the State Committee for State Property Management and in 2010 its chairman. In 2012–2014 he headed the State Committee for Privatisation, Demonopolisation and Competition Development. By presidential decree of 4 March 2014 he was appointed Minister of Labour and Social Protection, a post he held until 2017.

In 2017–2018 he chaired the State Committee for Tourism Development. From 28 May 2018 he was Deputy Prime Minister, head of the complex covering education, health care, physical culture, sport and tourism; from 12 January 2019 he has also been rector of the International University of Tourism “Silk Road” in Samarkand. From April 2021 he was Minister of Tourism and Sports and from February 2022 Minister of Tourism and Cultural Heritage. On 9 November 2022 he received the Grand Cordon of Japan's Order of the Rising Sun in Tokyo.

On 30 December 2022 he left the post of Deputy Prime Minister and was appointed Minister of Natural Resources; in June 2023 the ministry was renamed the Ministry of Ecology, Environmental Protection and Climate Change and he continued to head it. On 19 November 2025 a presidential decree turned the ministry into the National Committee for Ecology and Climate Change, with Abdukhakimov as its chairman and as the President's adviser on ecology.