Kazakhstan is executing an $80 billion National Infrastructure Plan, and Uzbekistan has budgeted roughly $47 billion in consolidated spending for 2026. Both programs have moved past the announcement stage. Road packages, port works, and mining projects are now appearing on public tender portals with equipment requirements attached, and the machines are overwhelmingly imported.
Kazakhstan’s numbers frame the scale. Industrial machinery and mechanical equipment is the country’s largest import category, worth about $9.8 billion a year according to trade data platform Eximpedia, covering mining machinery, construction equipment, and processing tools. The road program alone plans over 13,000 km of construction and rebuilds by 2030, which pulls in earthmoving first, then material handling for bridge works, precast yards, and depot construction. On the Caspian side, the Aktau International Commercial Sea Port is being modernized with EBRD support to double container handling capacity by end of 2026. Port and logistics-hub construction is a core telehandler application: container stripping, pallet staging at height, and maintenance work that a 7 m to 14 m machine covers in one unit.
Uzbekistan’s pipeline is more concentrated. The government has launched a $4.2 billion critical minerals program spanning 120 projects, with the first 12 rolling out in 2026, and channels roughly $5 billion a year through public procurement. Since 2021, the largest state enterprises and seven ministries have been required to buy through public tenders. Mining developments need telehandlers in the 17 m to 18 m, 4 t to 5 t class for plant maintenance and mill relines, alongside the excavators and haul trucks that dominate the headline orders.
Three sub-regions deserve your attention first: Kazakhstan’s national road corridors, the Aktau and wider Mangystau port zone, and Uzbekistan’s Tashkent region plus the new mining sites. Buyers differ by segment. In Kazakhstan, road tenders run through state contractors bidding on goszakup.gov.kz, the national procurement portal. In Uzbekistan, the buyers are state-owned enterprises and mining operators, with bids submitted in Uzbek or Russian, typical one-month submission windows, and clearance required from the Ministry of Economy and Finance plus an expert examination of import contracts.
Those procedures are the real entry barriers, more than tariffs. You need Russian-language bid documents, a registered local entity or partner for most government work, and machines specified for the climate: winter operation to minus 30 C in northern Kazakhstan means cold-start packages, block heaters, and hydraulic oil specs written into the tender response. Western brands have thin dealer coverage across both countries, which is why Chinese equipment already dominates the import mix. China shipped an estimated $1.58 billion of construction machinery to Uzbekistan in 2025, up 28% year on year, a figure circulated by the UzStroy Expo organizers citing customs data. Procurement here is price-driven: a mid-size Chinese telehandler landing at 30% to 50% below a comparable Manitou or JLG unit typically wins state-funded work, provided CE or equivalent conformity documents pass the import examination.
Logistics favors the buyer for once. Rail freight across the Kazakh-Chinese border crossings reached 18.7 million tonnes in the first half of 2026, up 9% year on year, and Middle Corridor container traffic grew 37% to 63,300 TEU over the first ten months of 2025. For equipment sourced from Chinese factories, that is a two-week overland delivery instead of a multi-leg ocean routing through Black Sea or Baltic ports. This suggests delivery time, long the weak point of sourcing into landlocked Central Asia, is becoming a selling point instead.
If you are planning purchases against these programs, start with the tender portals rather than the market reports: register on goszakup.gov.kz for Kazakhstan, monitor the first 12 Uzbek critical minerals projects for equipment lots, and prepare Russian-language spec sheets with cold-climate options priced in. The paperwork takes weeks; the tenders will not wait for it.
## Sources
– [Trade.gov Kazakhstan Country Commercial Guide, Infrastructure](https://www.trade.gov/country-commercial-guides/kazakhstan-infrastructure)
– [Eximpedia, Kazakhstan Major Imports 2026](https://www.eximpedia.app/blog/imports-of-kazakhstan)
– [Trade.gov Uzbekistan, Selling to the Public Sector](https://www.trade.gov/country-commercial-guides/uzbekistan-selling-public-sector)
– [TendersGo, Uzbekistan 2026 Critical Minerals Industrial Projects](https://www.tendersgo.com/post/uzbekistan-2026-critical-minerals-industrial-projects-0135)
– [RailFreight.com, Kazakhstan-China Rail Freight Volume Up 9% in H1 2026](https://www.railfreight.com/railfreight/2026/07/20/kazakhstan-china-rail-freight-volume-up-by-9-in-h1-2026/)
– [The Astana Times, Kazakhstan’s Rail Freight Growth](https://astanatimes.com/2026/07/kazakhstans-rail-freight-growth-puts-infrastructure-expansion-in-focus/)