AKIPRESS.COM - For the first time, the United States will be holding its flagship international business event, the Eighth Annual Central Asia Trade Forum, in Uzbekistan. The event, organized by the U.S. Agency for international Development (USAID) and co-hosted by the Ministry for Foreign Trade of the Government of Uzbekistan, will be held on October 17-18 in Tashkent.

The Central Asia Trade Forum (CATF) provides a unique platform for businesses to explore new opportunities to reach the more than 70 million potential customers in Central Asia’s emerging markets. Last year’s forum in Almaty, Kazakhstan attracted more than 1,100 participants from 18 countries. Since the first CATF was held in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan in 2011, business executives, government leaders and industry experts from Asia, the United States, Europe and the Middle East have used the forum as platform to share ideas, strike deals and forge new partnerships for future cooperation.

This year’s forum theme, New Horizons in Trade and Investment, reflects Central Asia’s increasing openness to regional and international trade, particularly in Uzbekistan, which has embraced a series of measures, from currency liberalization to reforms in the business sector, to transform the country’. A concurrent trade exhibition will showcase businesses from a variety of sectors across the region, including transportation, tourism, information technology, equipment manufacturing and horticultural production and processing, among others.

CATF is supported by USAID’s Competitiveness, Trade, and Jobs Activity in Central Asia, which facilitates exports and employment in horticulture and strengthens tourism, transport and logistics services across the five Central Asian economies. By helping firms to become more regionally competitive and by addressing cross-border impediments to trade, USAID is helping to develop a more diverse and competitive private sector and generate export-driven growth.