On August 28, at 9:35 am, local time, Uzbekistan’s resident population reached 38 million people.
Central Asia’s population in general has been increasing at a phenomenal rate since its five countries became independent after the collapse of the Soviet Union in late 1991, but Uzbekistan is the only one of the five to have seen such a high pace of growth.
Half of all people
The current trends indicate that Uzbekistan’s population will account for half of all people in Central Asia within a few years.
Figures from the Soviet Union’s census of 1989 show the Uzbek population standing at 19,810,077 people, so it was somewhere over 20mn when the USSR met its end in late 1991 and the Central Asian countries became independent.
Read more at BNE Intellinews.
Bruce Pannier is a Research Fellow at the Turan Research Center.