Research · Updated: October 13, 2026 · 8 min read

Design tenders in Uzbekistan: 151 lots a month, 58 under UZS 50m

Design tenders in Uzbekistan are a quiet but busy market. Between 14 September and 13 October 2026, customers, mostly government bodies and state-owned companies, announced 151 lots for design and estimate documentation (PSD), surveys, expert review and supervision, worth UZS 66.3 billion in total. 58 of them are priced under UZS 50 million, and for 70% of the lots bidders get a week or less to submit. We look at who orders design work, which licence you need after the 2026 changes, when the Ministry of Construction rating matters and why a deep discount is dangerous.

Data from Tanlo and the etender.uzex.uz platform as of 13 October 2026. Methodology is at the end of the article.

What counts as a "design" tender

From the "Construction and repair" category we picked the lots in which the customer buys documents and inspections rather than construction itself. Real estate valuation and laboratory testing were excluded.

138 lots were posted on etender.uzex.uz, 12 on xt-xarid.uz (Hayot Birja) and one on a commercial tender website. On etender, 135 of the 138 lots are a "selection of the best offers": a simplified procedure for contracts up to 6,000 BRV for budget-funded customers and up to 25,000 BRV for state-owned companies (Law ZRU-684 on Public Procurement, Article 56). Only three are full-scale tenders. BRV is the base calculation amount, a statutory unit equal to UZS 440,000 since 1 September 2026, so 6,000 BRV is about UZS 2.64 billion.

Who orders design work and how much they pay

More than a third of the lots, 57, came from a single organisation: the Directorate for Building Operation and Construction and Repair Works (Binolardan foydalanish va qurilish-ta’mirlash ishlari direksiyasi). Most of these are topographic surveys, geology and environmental projects for national parks, nurseries and nature reserves, with a typical price of UZS 11 million. For a small survey firm this is an accessible way in, but geology requires a licence, and the cost of travelling to a remote site is worth calculating in advance.

The expensive lots come from road agencies and state-owned companies: PSD for the reconstruction of the Navoi–Uchkuduk road (UZS 10.8 billion, a tender), a technical and economic justification for compressor station "5A" for Uztransgaz (UZS 4.5 billion), and a technical and economic justification for the Chevrolet N400 project in Khorezm for UzAuto Motors (UZS 3.2 billion). Among companies, the most frequent buyers of design work were the National Bank of Uzbekistan (Uzmilliybank, 7 lots in a month), the single-customer service of the Tashkent Region khokimiyat (regional administration) (6) and Navoi TPP (5).

149 lots priced in UZS; for two lots no amount in UZS is given. The median is UZS 100 million.

Tashkent city and Tashkent Region account for the most lots (23 each), followed by Karakalpakstan (17), Khorezm and Namangan (14 each).

Do you need a licence for design work in 2026?

As a rule, yes. PSD development, engineering surveys, building inspections and repair designs are all covered by a single licence from the Ministry of Construction and Housing and Communal Services (Minstroy): the licence "for the development of architectural and urban planning documentation" (Law ZRU-701 on Licensing, Annex 1, para. 31). Separate licences are required for designing bridges and tunnels (para. 29) and high-risk facilities (para. 30). Geodesy and topographic surveys are not covered by the licence and never were: you notify the Cadastre Agency and register the work itself. Engineering and geological surveys do require a licence.

What changed in 2026:

• Simple facilities: notification only. Since 1 March, no licence is needed for documentation on facilities of complexity category I; notifying Minstroy is enough (ZRU-701, Annex 3, para. 19¹). But a notification does not get you into the Minstroy rating, and customers often require a licence specifically in the terms of reference.
• Specialist certificates. Since 1 January, without a certificate you cannot develop documentation, carry out technical supervision or conduct expert reviews on facilities of risk categories II–IV and on budget-funded facilities of category I (Cabinet of Ministers Resolution, CMR No. 460).

Do not mix up the two scales: the complexity category decides whether a notification is enough, while the risk category decides whether a certificate is needed and whether the regional restriction applies. These are separate classifications.

The licence has no expiry date, and applications are reviewed within 7 working days. The state fee depends on the type of work: for PSD for residential and civil buildings, for example, it is 75 BRV, about UZS 33 million (CMR No. 80, Annex 21). The same document sets staffing requirements: the number of specialists and chief project engineers depends on the category of facilities.

When the Minstroy rating decides

A special regime applies to a narrow set of lots: PSD for the construction, reconstruction and major repair of facilities financed from the budget under state programmes (CMR No. 46, Annex 2). Stand-alone lots for surveys, inspections, technical supervision and feasibility studies for state-owned companies are not covered, and master plans and detailed planning projects are excluded explicitly. Only organisations listed in the Minstroy rating (reyting.mc.uz) can take part in such a tender. You do not need to apply for the rating: Minstroy adds licensed firms to it automatically (CMR No. 699, paras. 11 and 18).

• Scoring. The platform calculates the scores itself: the rating score is multiplied by 0.8, and price earns up to 20 points. For each uncompleted contract, 2% of the rating score is deducted from the total.
• Discount cap. If the starting price including VAT is up to 300 BRV (UZS 132 million), it can be cut by no more than 5%; up to 1,500 BRV (UZS 660 million), by 10%; up to 3,000 BRV (UZS 1.32 billion), by 15%; above that, by 20%. The design period must match the one set by the customer.
• Deposit and deadlines. Bid security is capped at 2%. Bids are accepted for 12 to 30 working days.
• Region. For facilities of risk categories I–II, only firms from the same region are admitted; Tashkent city and Tashkent Region count as one region. The restriction does not apply to lead institutes with branches.
• Own resources and designer's supervision. At least 60% of the work value must be performed in-house. Designer's (author's) supervision must be included in the price.
• Walking away. If the winner does not confirm acceptance, the deposit is not returned and the firm is barred from such tenders for 24 months (Annex 2, para. 16).

The platform automatically filters out bidders with overdue taxes or an entry in the register of unscrupulous contractors. All other design lots are bought under the general Law on Public Procurement, mostly through selections. You can tell which regime applies from the lot page: in this month's etender lots, the most common terms were a 3% deposit (103 of 138) and a 30% advance (87 of 138), which are the terms of selections, not rating-based tenders.

Where the starting price comes from

For budget-funded customers and state enterprises, the cost of design work is calculated under a Minstroy regulation (registration No. 3180) as a percentage of the construction cost: up to 5% for a facility worth up to 500 BRV (UZS 220 million) and about 2.5% for the largest ones. Timeframes are regulated too: up to 1.5 months for a major repair design and up to three months for a reconstruction design.

Presidential Decree PF-104 brought two changes. From 1 July 2026, "parallel" design carried out at the same time as construction has been abolished for new facilities. And government bodies and companies with a state share of 50% or more may now price a design by complexity category and pay for designer's supervision under a separate contract (in rating-based tenders under CMR No. 46 it is still included in the price).

Why discounts of up to 55% are a risk

We checked 27 completed selections run by state-owned companies for design and survey work between 14 September and 12 October 2026. The median winning discount was 26%; in 9 selections it was 40% or more, and the maximum was 55%. The discount caps from CMR No. 46 do not apply to these selections: state-owned companies spending their own money buy under the general law.

However, the law prohibits underpricing if it is followed by refusal to sign the contract or poor performance. Such a winner loses the deposit and may be put on the register of unscrupulous contractors for two years (ZRU-684, Articles 46 and 48), which shuts it out of all public procurement. On top of that, the designer is liable for errors: at the customer's request it must correct the documentation free of charge and compensate losses, even if the defects surface during construction or operation, unless the contract says otherwise (Civil Code, Article 691). Calculate your discount from your real cost, not from your wish to win.

What to do this week

1. Check your types of work against the licence sub-types and see whether a notification is enough for complexity category I.
2. Find your firm on reyting.mc.uz: without a rating you cannot bid in tenders for budget-funded PSD under state programmes.
3. Check the certificates of your chief project engineer and specialists: without them you cannot work on facilities of risk categories II–IV or on budget-funded facilities of category I.
4. Clear tax debts and uncompleted contracts: the platform sees both.
5. Start with selections for surveys and inspections under UZS 50 million: there were 58 of them in a month, and they build experience.
6. Set up alerts: when bidders get a week or less, a lot spotted on day three is already too late.

All design lots are in Tanlo's "Construction and repair" (RU) feed under the "Design and expert review" subcategory, and new ones are sent to Telegram based on your filters. On the morning of 13 October, 86 such lots were open there. For contracts on construction itself, see our article on companies' construction tenders; for deposits and fees, our breakdown "how much money you need for a tender"; for how a selection differs from a tender, our article on procurement methods.

Methodology

Lots: Tanlo database, "Design and expert review" subcategory (assigned by AI based on the lot text), published between 14 September and 13 October 2026, all sources. We manually excluded 62 lots unrelated to design: real estate valuation, laboratory testing, non-destructive testing and lots without a description. Procurement method, deposit and advance were taken from the lot pages on etender.uzex.uz. Discounts: the open deals register of etender.uzex.uz, selections by corporate customers in UZS; discount = 1 − deal price / starting price. The median is the middle value: half of the lots are above it, half below.

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