According to the report from the Statistics Agency under the President, the actual income of the Uzbekistan citizens, which excludes mandatory or other deductions, increased by 10.8% in the first quarter of 2023, amounting to 144 trillion soums. This figure is adjusted for inflation, which is recorded at 11.66% during the same period.
The recent surge in growth rate surpasses the figures from the first quarter in previous years, including 2022 (5.4%), 2021 (9.8%), 2020 (7.6%), 2019 (8.6%), and 2018 (10.6%). While data for the initial quarter of 2017 remains unavailable, the annual growth for that year reached 12.2%.
Aggregate income is one of the main indicators of the well-being of the population. It consists not only of income from employment and self-employment, but also from own production of services for own consumption, income from property (interest, dividends, fees, etc.) and income from transfers (pensions, benefits, scholarships, remittances).
Financier Otabek Bakirov wrote a post in which he wondered how aggregate income could have shown record growth for the quarter if many industries have experienced downtime this year and remittances have tended to decline.
The Statistics Agency says that the aggregate income is calculated on the basis of a methodological manual developed on the basis of the System of National Accounts (SNA), international statistical standards of 2008, recommendations of the International Labour Organization and Uzbekistan’s legislation.
According to the agency, the increase in aggregate income was mainly due to “significant changes” in income from employment (wage earners and self-employment), which accounted for 60.4% of all income, and income from transfers, which accounted for 27.9%.
Nominal growth rate of labour income was 20.6% compared to the same period of 2022 and ensured increase of nominal size of the population’s total income by 12.8%, the agency notes.
Nominal increase of income from social transfers (pensions, allowances and scholarships) was 26.1% year-on-year and ensured increase of nominal size of total income by 3.2%.
Remittances from abroad increased nominally by 37.2%, while their share in total income increased by only 1.5 percentage points. This change ensured a 5.2% increase in the nominal value of the population’s aggregate income, the ministry said.
In addition, the share of income from services of own production for personal consumption in aggregate income was 8.3%, with a nominal growth rate of 20.9% compared to the corresponding period in 2022, which increased nominal aggregate income by 1.8%.
