Photo: Social Fund of Kyrgyzstan
Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan have agreed to mutually recognize pension service, which will be counted toward benefits regardless of which of the two countries a retiree lives in or where they worked before retirement. Drafts of the relevant documents were signed at a meeting of representatives from the two countries’ agencies in Tashkent, according to the press service of the Social Fund of Kyrgyzstan.
The talks involved staff from Kyrgyzstan’s Social Fund and the Off-Budget Pension Fund under Uzbekistan’s Ministry of Economy and Finance. The sides signed a draft agreement on state social insurance and pension provision, which takes into account the legal frameworks of both countries.
The Social Fund emphasized that the main goal of the agreements is to ensure equal rights for citizens of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan to receive insurance and state pensions, and to avoid double payment of insurance contributions.
The document signed in Tashkent provides for:
✅ Combining insurance periods for pension eligibility;
✅ Direct pension payments to citizens, regardless of country of residence, without deduction for delivery costs;
✅ Rules on assignments and extensions to avoid duplicate contributions.
According to Kyrgyz officials, the implementation of the agreement will strengthen bilateral relations and create additional opportunities for social and economic cooperation, including major infrastructure projects such as the construction of the China–Kyrgyzstan–Uzbekistan railway.
The issue of mutual recognition of pension service is particularly pressing in relations between Russia and the former Soviet republics, as many citizens from these countries work in Russia or have moved there permanently. After the dissolution of the USSR, Russian authorities granted and paid pensions to migrants from CIS countries regardless of where they had made insurance contributions. But in 2023, the legal framework governing this arrangement expired.
Moscow has since begun signing separate agreements. Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan have rejoined Russia’s “pension program” under a relevant treaty among Eurasian Economic Union members. This means that migrants from these Central Asian republics have their Soviet-era service recognized, as well as post-independence service up to 2021—the year Russia began the process of terminating its pension agreement with CIS countries—and work performed in Russia.
Tajikistan has a separate treaty under which Russia counts all service acquired in the migrant’s former country of residence when calculating pensions.
At present, Russia and Uzbekistan have not yet signed such a document, although negotiations have been ongoing for several years at various levels.
