A Tajik business delegation numbering more than 250 people departed for Tashkent today for participation in the next meeting of the Council of Entrepreneurs of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan that will take place in the Uzbek capital during President Emomali Rahmon’s state visit to Uzbekistan scheduled for August 17-18.  

The Tajik delegation members include senior representatives of companies dealing with production of primary aluminum, textiles, food products, leather goods, clothes and shoes, jewelry, as well as handicraftsmen, a source in the Tajik government told Asia-Plus in an interview.    

The meeting is expected to result in signing of more than 40 cooperation documents totaling more than 200 million U.S. dollars.  

An exhibition of Tajikistan’s industrial goods, dubbed Made in Tajikistan, will take place in Tashkent.  President Emomali Rahmon and his Uzbek counterpart Shavkat Mirziyoyev are expected to visit the exhibition on August 17.  

Twenty-three new cooperation documents will be signed during Emomali Rahmon’s state visit to Uzbekistan. 

The two nations have accumulated many problems after collapse of the Soviet Union.  These problems caused the countries' relations to go into a deep freeze two decades ago, including disputes over water and borders.  The two countries had had the worst bilateral relations in Central Asia.  With the election of Shavkat Mirziyoyev as President of Uzbekistan Uzbek-Tajik relations, as well as relations between Uzbekistan and its neighbors in Central Asia, reached a new era of potential.

Mirziyoyev and Emomali Rahmon have met several times since September 2016, and in March 2018, Mirziyoyev made an historic visit to Dushanbe, where 27 bilateral agreements were signed in the fields of trade, economy, investment, finance, transport and transit, agriculture, water and energy, taxes, customs, tourism, education and science, health, culture, interregional cooperation, in the field of security and countering crime.