FINANCING MECHANISMS FOR MODERNISING TRANSPORTLOGISTICS INFRASTRUCTURE: ROLLING-STOCK RENEWAL AND THE DIVERSIFICATION OF INVESTMENT SOURCES IN UZBEKISTAN

Abstract

This paper examines how the financial mechanism that underpins the transportlogistics sector can be re-engineered to accelerate the modernisation of national infrastructure in a
lower-middle-income, landlocked economy. Two interrelated propositions are advanced and
tested on the case of Uzbekistan. First, the renewal of the rolling-stock fleet (wagons, locomotives,
road vehicles, refrigerated containers, and river and air craft) should be financed through a
dedicated incentive architecture for domestic carriers, evaluated on a whole-life-cost rather than
an acquisition-cost basis. Second, the chronic under-capitalisation of infrastructure can be relieved
by widening the menu of external and internal funding channels and by anchoring a modern
network of transport-logistics centres on the principal points of cargo formation. Using descriptive
statistics, comparative international benchmarking, whole-life-cost accounting, and a multi-factor
time-series regression for 2010-2025, the study finds that fleet renewal raises technical reliability
by approximately twelve per cent while lowering operating and maintenance outlays; that the
parallel mobilisation of five distinct funding sources allows a representative portfolio of twelve
infrastructure projects to proceed without interruption; and that logistics investment, publicprivate-partnership activity, transport-network development, and digitalisation are jointly and
significantly associated with the growth of transport-logistics output. Because the four explanatory
series share a strong common trend and are highly intercorrelated, the inferential model is
estimated in first differences, which controls for that trend and yields well-behaved residual
diagnostics; in this specification logistics investment carries a robust, statistically significant
positive effect, with the remaining variables contributing positively. The paper concludes that
financing should be treated not as a passive supply of capital but as a strategic instrument of
structural transformation, and it sets out a staged policy pathway consistent with Uzbekistan's
transport-system development agenda to 2030.