Rustam Azimov

Rustam Sodiqovich Azimov was born in Tashkent on 20 September 1958 into the family of the academician Sodiq Azimov. He studied at Tashkent State University (now the National University of Uzbekistan) and at the Tashkent Institute of Irrigation and Melioration, and completed a master’s-level course at the University of Oxford. He started out at the Foton plant and in the 1980s served in economic and party bodies of the Jizzakh and Tashkent regions.

In 1990 Azimov took charge of the board of the private commercial bank Ipak Yuli. A year later he moved to the National Bank for Foreign Economic Activity of Uzbekistan and ran it until 1998. From 1992 he was also the country’s governor at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

His ministerial career began in 1998 at the Ministry of Finance, and an Oliy Majlis session confirmed the appointment on 11 February 2000. In the summer of 2000 (1 August) the post was joined by the rank of Deputy Prime Minister and the leadership of the general economic complex. Three months later, on 8 November, he moved to the Ministry of Macroeconomics and Statistics and stayed there until 24 December 2002. On 22 January 2003 he became Minister of Economy, a post he kept until 25 July 2005.

In the summer of 2005 he briefly headed the ministry for foreign economic relations, investment and trade, but returned to the Ministry of Finance before the year was out. For the next eleven years he combined it with the office of First Deputy Prime Minister and was responsible for the complex for economy and foreign economic relations; in September 2016 education and science were added to his duties.

On 15 December 2016 Azimov left the Ministry of Finance but kept his place as Deputy Prime Minister and head of the complex for macroeconomic development, structural reforms and attracting foreign investment. He gave up the second post on 6 June 2017, when a Cabinet of Ministers resolution made him General Director of the National Export-Import Insurance Company Uzbekinvest.

According to media reports, Azimov still headed Uzbekinvest in June 2025, when he gave an interview to Gazeta on budget policy.