_BIOGRAPHY Alisher Khaitmetov is Country Director of Veolia Uzbekistan. An ACCA-qualified finance professional, he previously held senior financial roles at international companies including BAT and GM, spanning operations in Africa, South Korea and France, before joining Veolia to lead the Tashkent concession.

“THREE YEARS AGO, UZBEKISTAN WAS ACTIVELY SEEKING INTERNATIONAL CAPITAL. TODAY, INTERNATIONAL INVESTORS ARE SEEKING UZBEKISTAN.”

WHAT HAVE BEEN YOUR MOST SIGNIFICANT OPERATIONAL MILESTONES?

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The July 2022 handover was a structural rupture, not a transfer of keys. We inherited a system defined by high technical entropy, where nearly half of all heat produced was lost before it reached a single building. Reversing that pattern has been the central work of our first three years in Tashkent.

Commercial heat losses have fallen from 41.7% to 27.7%.

Behind that headline sits a 26.2% reduction in water loss, saving 33.2 million cubic meters annually, a figure with direct consequences for regional water security. CO2 emissions across Scope 1 and 2 dropped 46% between 2022 and late 2025. These are not incremental corrections. For a network that had been deteriorating for decades under state management, they represent a full reversal of trajectory. What this says about the PPP model is plain.

Combine international operating discipline with local infrastructure and a mandate long enough to plan in decades rather than budget cycles, and the gains compound fast. Uzbekistan provided the political commitment; Veolia delivered the operational results. That sequence matters for every future PPP discussion in Central Asia.

HOW IS THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE €1.4 BILLION MODERNISATION PROGRAMME?

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We are on track, and the underlying logic is holding. The financial architecture of this contract is built on a cycle: efficiency gains generate savings, savings fund reinvestment, reinvestment produces further efficiency. Since 2022, cumulative gas savings have reached roughly 1 billion Nm³. In cost terms, that translates to approximately €120 million in avoided energy expenditure.

Gas consumption is down 31% while heat sales have remained stable.

That spread generates the margin needed to sustain the €1.4 billion programme over its full term. Deployment of pre-insulated piping has accelerated ahead of the original schedule. Critical pumping stations across Tashkent are being upgraded in sequence. Every euro recovered through operational efficiency feeds directly back into network resilience. The original business plan assumed a slower ramp; in practice, the efficiency gains arrived earlier and at greater scale than projected. That reinvestment discipline is not a feature of the model. It is the model.

WHAT ARE THE MOST COMPLEX ENGINEERING CHALLENGES IN MODERNISING A LIVE NETWORK OF THIS SCALE?

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We are performing a total technological overhaul of a heating system that serves 1.2 million residents, and we are doing it while the system remains fully operational. There is no shutdown window. The work happens around the clock, around the calendar. The core difficulty is the integration of Individual Heat Substations into a building stock of wildly varying age, material condition and design.

We are shifting from a passive distribution model, where heat flows regardless of actual demand, to an active, demand-driven system that responds to real consumption patterns. Balancing hydraulic loads across close to 2,000 km of pipelines, some dating back to Soviet-era construction, requires a degree of precision that manual operation simply cannot sustain. That is where Veolia’s Hubgrade digital monitoring platform comes in. It gives us real-time simulation and control across the full network. Sensors and automated substations form a digital layer over the physical infrastructure.

We are not just replacing pipes; we are giving the city the tools to understand and manage its own heat consumption for the first time. When the transition is complete, Tashkent will operate one of the most digitally integrated district heating networks in the region.

WHAT IS YOUR MESSAGE TO INVESTORS INTERESTED IN UZBEKISTAN?

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Three years ago, Uzbekistan was actively seeking international capital. That dynamic has shifted. Today, international investors are seeking Uzbekistan. We see it ourselves: the quality of the partnerships on offer, the speed of regulatory approvals, the seriousness of counterparts in government. What changed is evidence.

The government has de-monopolised strategic assets, maintained regulatory consistency across political cycles, and honoured its commitments through an operationally demanding transition period. For investors evaluating multi-decade infrastructure bets, that track record is the asset. The same regulatory stability that allowed Veolia to deploy at this scale is what makes a 20- or 30-year commitment credible.

For investors, the question is no longer whether Uzbekistan is ready. Our contract answers that. The question is whether you enter in the current cycle or the next one. Tashkent’s district heating network now runs to Veolia standards. Commercial losses are down by a third, CO2 emissions nearly halved, and 1.2 million residents receive measurably better heat than they did four years ago. That is what execution looks like in this market.