Uzbekistan as an engineering destination for Spanish companies: what holds the model up
Corpshore Spain editorial team · · 6 min read
In summary: Uzbekistan has built its IT services export sector around IT Park, which hosts more than 650 resident companies with exemptions from corporate income tax, VAT, social tax and turnover tax until 2028, and a regime extended to 2040 for exporting companies. For a Spanish company, the fit depends mostly on the time zone.
Uzbekistan does not feature in the usual outsourcing conversation in Spain, and yet it has spent several years deliberately building an IT services export sector. It is worth understanding what holds that up before either dismissing or adopting it.
This article summarises the regime that explains the growth and, just as plainly, the two limits that decide it for a Spanish team.
What is IT Park and why does it matter?
IT Park is the vehicle through which Uzbekistan has organised its technology export sector. It hosts more than 650 resident companies, and its residents recorded a 70 percent increase in exports in 2024.
The tax regime is the main lever. Member companies enjoy exemption from corporate income tax, VAT, social tax and turnover tax until 1 January 2028. Employee income tax is reduced to a preferential rate of 7.5 percent against the national 12 percent.
For export-oriented companies, defined as those generating more than half their revenue abroad, the tax and customs benefits, with the exception of VAT, extend across the period from 1 January 2028 to 1 January 2040.
That long horizon is what distinguishes Uzbekistan from other emerging markets: an incentive expiring in two years shapes investment very differently from one with visibility to 2040.
What does the time zone mean for a Spanish team?
This is the deciding factor, and it is worth looking at in numbers. Uzbekistan stays on UTC+5 all year and does not observe daylight saving, so the difference from mainland Spain is three hours in summer and four in winter. Either way its working day starts and ends earlier than the Spanish one.
Overlap exists and is comfortable for a daily meeting and for code review, but it does not cover the full Spanish afternoon. For a development team working in delivery cycles with bounded coordination, that is sufficient. For a service requiring immediate response throughout the Spanish working day, it is not.
Uzbekistan therefore fits engineering and software development well and fits Spanish-language customer service badly, which is a point worth being direct about rather than selling the whole catalogue from every hub.
And the language?
Work is done in technical English, not Spanish. For a Spanish engineering team used to working with documentation and version control in English, this is usually a minor issue.
It is a real factor in nuanced communication: design conversations, priority discussions and scope negotiations happen in a language that is not the first of either party. A technical lead acting as a bridge reduces that friction considerably, which is why we always recommend one in this model.
What data protection obligations arise?
Uzbekistan holds no European Commission adequacy decision, so any processing of European personal data from there requires standard contractual clauses and, depending on sensitivity, a transfer impact assessment.
In engineering projects the most effective measure is usually structural: work on development environments and test data, and restrict access to environments with real data to what is strictly necessary, with role-based access control and access logging.
If the project requires continuous access to real personal data of European customers, it is worth reviewing whether a different model fits better.
Which kind of project does it suit?
Dedicated development teams with their own roadmap, where daily coordination is enough and work is measured by delivery.
Data engineering and platform work, where interaction with the business is less continuous than in customer-facing product work.
And it fits badly, as stated, for any service requiring synchronous coverage of the Spanish afternoon or support in Spanish.
This article is general information, not legal advice. We work alongside your legal advisors, not in their place.