Georgia has become a strategic partner of Uzbekistan. Following negotiations in Tbilisi on July 3, 2026, the leaders of the two countries signed a declaration to this effect.
The state visit of the President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev to Georgia — the first in 23 years — is laying the foundation for ambitious new endeavors.
Clearly, Georgia has shifted its focus significantly towards Central Asia over the past year. The country is linking its long-term development plans in a number of areas, including trade and transport logistics, with this region.
Tbilisi and Tashkent are already aiming to increase trade turnover from the current $270 million to $1 billion. This will be challenging and will require the active involvement of the private sector.
Improving transport connectivity is expected to be a key driver of growing mutual trade. Tashkent has specific proposals in this regard. These include extending the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan (CKU) railway, whose construction began in April 2025, to the South Caucasus, Türkiye and Europe via the Caspian and Black Seas. This will create a new multimodal route along the east-west axis, incorporating the Middle Corridor. The CKU could also be connected to the Middle Corridor via the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway, which now has a capacity of 5 million tons per year. In both cases, Georgia serves as a key hub for transcontinental logistics thanks to its geographical location and modernizing railway and port infrastructure.
In 2025, 1.2 million tons of cargo from Uzbekistan were transported along the Middle Corridor. The ongoing instability in the Middle East and the war in Ukraine are likely to continue emphasizing the trans-Caspian and trans-Caucasian routes for Central Asian exports. Against this backdrop, Uzbekistan is showing increasing interest in the ports of Poti and Batumi, which provide maritime access to Europe. The creation of a logistics hub for the efficient transportation of goods via Georgia’s Black Sea ports is under consideration. These plans are in line with the development of the CASCA+ corridor (Central Asia – South Caucasus –Anatolia+), which was launched at the initiative of Tashkent in 2019. The project, which also involves Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Türkiye, aims to increase rail transport both between the beneficiary countries and in the Europe-China-Europe direction. In June 2026, the parties met in Istanbul to discuss measures to improve the efficiency of the CASCA+ corridor. Following the meeting, they signed an agreement to increase freight volumes.
* The Institute for Advanced International Studies (IAIS) does not take institutional positions on any issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the IAIS.
