Uzbekistan’s Presidential Administration Head Saida Mirziyoyeva met with Google Vice President Karan Bhatia to discuss prospects for launching YouTube monetization in Uzbekistan.
The talks took place during Mirziyoyeva’s visit to the United States to attend the 81st session of the UN General Assembly. Her assistant and Uzbekistan’s Minister-Counsellor to the US Komil Allamjonov also attended the meeting, according to the photos.
Mirziyoyeva noted that Uzbekistan has recently improved legislation on personal data processing and digital payments. This is expected to pave the way for the launch of international payment systems in the country.
“There are huge opportunities for partnership with the company. There is a lot of work ahead”, Mirziyoyeva said.
According to official YouTube data, its monetization program is available to content creators in 108 countries. In Central Asia, the program is currently available only in Kazakhstan.
The issue of lifting restrictions on YouTube monetization in Uzbekistan has been discussed since at least 2023. At the time, Allamjonov and Mirziyoyeva raised the issue during a meeting with former US Ambassador to Uzbekistan Jonathan Henick.
Changes to personal data legislation
On March 26, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev approved amendments to the Law on Personal Data. Under the changes, the mandatory requirement to store personal data on servers inside Uzbekistan remains only for biometric and genetic data, as well as data of telecommunications subscribers.
Other personal data may be stored and processed abroad if at least one of several conditions is met. These include recognition of the foreign country as providing adequate data protection, compliance with approved standard contractual clauses or binding corporate rules, or adherence to international standards for managing and storing personal data.
At the end of July, the Cabinet of Ministers approved a list of jurisdictions that provide personal data protection in accordance with Uzbekistan’s legislation. The list includes 49 countries and territories, including the US, Canada, the UK, EU countries, Russia and Japan.
At the same time, Jamshid Usmanov, head of the Central Bank’s Payment Systems Development Department, said in July that Google Pay and Apple Pay are expected to launch in Uzbekistan in the coming months. The regulator is working on adding not only Visa and Mastercard cards to the services, but also the national Humo and Uzcard payment systems.
The English version of this material was generated with the assistance of AI translation tools and may differ slightly from the original text.
