This Currency's Sudden 50% Devaluation May Attract Bargain Hunters
- New president of ex-Soviet nation taking steps to reform
- Uzbekistan puts soum’s official rate in line with black market
Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
Photographer: Alexander RyuminTASS via Getty ImagesThis article is for subscribers only.
Nine months after his election, President Shavkat Mirziyoev put Uzbekistan on investors’ radar.
A 50 percent devaluation late Monday knocked the official rate of the soum from 4,210.35 per dollar to 8,100, setting the Central Asian nation’s currency on track for the biggest drop globally this year. Days before, Mirziyoev had signed a decree allowing citizens to buy and sell hard currency and removed the requirement that exporters sell their earnings at a knock-down official rate.