On October 21st local time, Uzbekistan's President Shavkat Mirziyoyev visited the Mirzo Ulugbek district of the capital Tashkent to preside over the groundbreaking ceremony for the highly anticipated IT park phase II project. This major initiative marks a new chapter in the country's strategic blueprint for building a highland of technology and innovation in Central Asia.

The ceremony reviewed the brilliant achievements of the first phase of the project completed two years ago. The park, which was invested 200 million US dollars and covers an area of 4 hectares, has now been transformed into six skyscrapers and a modern conference hall. It has successfully transformed into the core driving force for Uzbekistan's technological and innovative development.

At present, the park has gathered 3200 active enterprises and employed over 14000 professional talents. By focusing on supporting, incubating, and accelerating startups, the park has cultivated a large number of successful projects in areas such as fintech, logistics, e-commerce, online education, and biotechnology. Its economic contribution is particularly impressive: the total service value reached 1.6 billion US dollars last year, and it is expected to exceed 2.5 billion US dollars by 2025. Among them, the service export value is expected to exceed 1 billion US dollars for the first time, fully demonstrating its strong international competitiveness.

Based on the successful experience of the first phase, the second phase of the project aims to achieve a qualitative leap. Firstly, the physical space of the park will significantly expand by 0.5 times. More importantly, the park will experience significant improvements in functionality and technological capabilities.

Cooperating with Saudi Arabia to build data center: Uzbekistan will collaborate with Saudi Arabia's Data Volt company to invest an initial $150 million to construct a 12 MW data center. This is just the beginning, with plans to add up to $3 billion in investment in the subsequent stages, ultimately increasing the total capacity of the data center to an astonishing 500 megawatts, providing a powerful computing foundation for the development of the national digital economy.

Newly built six functional buildings: Phase II will add six new buildings focusing on cutting-edge technology fields, including an artificial intelligence center, a space technology and future technology center, a trade service complex, and two 20 story office buildings. These facilities will collectively form a more diverse and international innovation ecosystem.

The launch of the second phase of the project is a crucial step in implementing the Uzbekistan 2030 Strategy. This strategic plan aims to create over 300000 high skilled and high-income job opportunities in the field of information technology. President Mirziyoyev emphasized at the ceremony that the new phase of construction will make significant contributions to achieving these ambitious goals and further strengthening mutually beneficial cooperation with foreign investors. According to expert evaluations, the country's potential in the field of artificial intelligence is as high as $10 billion, and the continuous expansion of IT parks is the core platform to unleash this potential. Keywords: the Belt and Road project news, the Belt and Road news

With the groundbreaking ceremony held, Uzbekistan has declared its firm determination to become a regional digital powerhouse to the world. This constantly growing IT park is not only a highland for technology and capital convergence, but also carries the development ambition of the entire country for the future, and is expected to occupy an important place in the digital economy map of Central Asia and even the world.Editor/Cheng Liting