The Plov Index: Uzbekistan's Official Cost of Plov
Uzbekistan's statistics committee prices a standard pot of plov every month. What's in the basket, why beef drives it, and what it can't tell a visitor.
132,625 soum. That's what Uzbekistan's National Statistics Committee calculated for one kilogram of plov in Tashkent city in September 2026, and it's the highest figure in the country. The lowest, in the Republic of Karakalpakstan, was 111,955 soum. Neither number is what a cafe charges. They're the cost of raw ingredients, priced region by region and published every month as the plov index, and they're a surprisingly good window into how food prices move here.
This page explains what goes into the index, why one ingredient decides almost everything, how the series changed in February 2025, and what a traveller can and can't read from it. All figures are in soum and come from the committee's own releases (last checked: October 2026).
The basket: eight ingredients, fixed quantities
The committee prices a single, fixed recipe in all 14 regional units (the 12 regions, Tashkent city and Karakalpakstan). For each one it takes the average local price of eight products and multiplies by a set quantity:
- Beef: 700 g
- Rice ("laser" variety): 1 kg
- Carrots: 1 kg
- Sunflower oil: 0.3 litre
- Onions: 300 g
- Chickpeas (listed as "peas" in the English tables): 100 g
- Cumin: 10 g
- Salt: 20 g
Add those up and the raw weight is well over three kilos, so the "1 kg of plov" label is a convention. Our reading is that it's best treated as the cost of a pot built on one kilo of rice. The committee's February 2025 notice says the quantities were "conditionally determined, taking into account regional characteristics", but the published tables use the same amounts for every region.
That makes it a generic plov. There's no mutton, no tail fat, no devzira rice, no raisins or quince. If you've read about how Fergana and Samarkand cooks build very different pots, you'll see the index flattens all of that on purpose: it's a price yardstick, not a recipe.
Why beef is two-thirds of the bill
Run the numbers in any month and beef dominates. In August 2025, the 700 g of beef made up between 64% and 68% of the basket depending on the region. By September 2026 that share had grown to between about 68% and 72% (Khorezm highest, at 71.5%). In Tashkent city the beef line alone came to 89,784 soum out of 132,625.
Everything else is small change by comparison. Rice, the second-biggest line, cost 18,000 to 22,479 soum across regions in September 2026. The 10 g of cumin varies wildly per kilo (74,011 soum in Samarkand, 118,064 in Tashkent city), but in the pot that's a difference of about 440 soum. Salt adds under 80.
So the index is, in practice, a beef price index with a rice and carrot garnish. That matters for the next section.
Regional table: August 2025 against 2026
The table gives the committee's calculated cost for August 2025 and August 2026 (a clean year-on-year pair), our own percentage change from those two figures, and the latest month, September 2026.
| Region | Aug 2025 (soum) | Aug 2026 (soum) | Change | Sep 2026 (soum) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Karakalpakstan | 98,647 | 109,605 | +11.1% | 111,955 |
| Andijan | 105,472 | 115,377 | +9.4% | 118,112 |
| Bukhara | 108,370 | 120,600 | +11.3% | 123,248 |
| Jizzakh | 110,034 | 119,372 | +8.5% | 121,331 |
| Kashkadarya | 111,708 | 122,257 | +9.4% | 124,515 |
| Navoi | 109,996 | 120,850 | +9.9% | 123,110 |
| Namangan | 109,365 | 119,776 | +9.5% | 121,679 |
| Samarkand | 113,439 | 123,498 | +8.9% | 125,828 |
| Surkhandarya | 111,495 | 121,367 | +8.9% | 123,762 |
| Syrdarya | 105,680 | 115,398 | +9.2% | 117,600 |
| Tashkent region | 113,536 | 124,226 | +9.4% | 126,786 |
| Fergana | 114,954 | 126,711 | +10.2% | 129,142 |
| Khorezm | 106,949 | 119,940 | +12.1% | 122,563 |
| Tashkent city | 117,376 | 130,285 | +11.0% | 132,625 |
A few things stand out. The gap between the cheapest and dearest region is narrow, about 18 to 19% in both years, so this isn't a country of wildly different food costs. Fergana is consistently second only to the capital, because it records the dearest beef per kilo of any region (129,760 soum in September 2026, slightly above Tashkent city's 128,263). Karakalpakstan was the cheapest region in every release checked for this page (July and August 2025, January, July, August and September 2026).
Between August and September 2026 every region rose again, by 1.6% to 2.4% in a single month. Check the committee's September 2026 release for the full ingredient-by-ingredient breakdown; the August and September 2026 releases both went up on the 5th of the following month.
Faster than inflation, and why
Uzbekistan's annual consumer price inflation was 6.4% in September 2026, according to the committee's CPI press release (it was 6.4% in July and 6.2% in August). The plov basket went up faster. Our August-on-August calculation gives 8.5% (Jizzakh) to 12.1% (Khorezm). For July, Brief.uz reported a 7 to 10% rise, with Khorezm and Andijan above 10%; the official July figures we checked support that (10.6% and 10.4%).
The reason is beef, almost entirely. The same CPI release puts boneless beef up 17.9% and bone-in beef up 16.2% on September 2025, while rice and broken rice fell 2.7%. The plov tables show the same split. From August 2025 to September 2026, the beef price per kilo rose 16% to 21% in every region, rice got cheaper in all 14 (down 2.5% to 6.8%), and the increase in the beef line accounts for roughly the whole rise in the basket. Oil, onions and carrots barely moved the total.
Timing is interesting too. Tashkent city's basket was 116,128 soum in January 2026, a little below its August 2025 level of 117,376. Karakalpakstan's was 98,234 against 98,647. In January every region was within 1.5% of its August 2025 level. In other words, the basket ended 2025 roughly where it had been in late summer, and nearly all of the past year's climb came between January and September 2026.
The February 2025 method change
If you find older "plov index" figures that look much higher, they're from a different series. Until January 2025 the statistics agency surveyed prices for one portion of ready-made plov at selected plov centres in each regional centre, and derived a "1 kg" price by multiplying a portion by seven. Restaurants and teahouses were excluded, and the sample of outlets could be refreshed each January.
The last reading on that basis, for January 2025, put a portion at 35,744 soum in Tashkent city and 22,995 soum in Namangan, the cheapest. In December 2021 the Tashkent city portion had been 24,750 soum. Daryo's report on the June 2023 data gave portion prices in dollars, from $1.68 in Fergana up to $2.53 for Tashkent city in its regional list (its summary line gives $2.45 for Tashkent, so treat those as approximate).
From February 2025 the committee switched to the ingredient basket described above, and its announcement of the change says so plainly. The two series can't be spliced together: one is a restaurant price that includes labour, rent, fuel and margin, the other is a shopping list.
Reading a release yourself
Each monthly release is a two-page PDF on stat.uz, posted in Uzbek, Russian and English under the committee's news section. Page one lists the average price per kilo (per litre for oil) of each of the eight products by region; page two multiplies by the fixed quantities and gives the total. Search terms shifted along the way: the 2025 English PDFs say "plov", the 2026 ones say "pilaf", and the Uzbek titles use "palov". A shorter text version, headed "How much does it cost to make 1 kilogram of plov?", sometimes appears alongside the PDF with just the regional totals. If a figure in this article doesn't match what you find there, trust the committee's PDF.
What the index tells a visitor, and what it doesn't
The committee itself says the figures "do not correspond to the price" of plov sold in the regions, because cooking and service are charged on top. Take that at face value. Don't divide the basket into plates and expect a cafe to match it.
What it does show is the regional gradient for groceries, especially meat. Tashkent city and Fergana sit at the top, Karakalpakstan, Syrdarya and Andijan at the bottom, and the whole spread is under a fifth. At roughly 11,800 soum to the dollar, September 2026's range works out at about $9.50 to $11.20 for the full basket. If you're self-catering or shopping at Tashkent's big domed market, the beef and carrot columns in the release are a decent sanity check on what locals pay per kilo in that month.
It also hints that plate prices ranked differently from ingredient costs under the old series. In January 2025, Khorezm had the third-dearest plov-centre portion (31,908 soum) even though its ingredient basket in 2025 was among the cheapest. That suggests rent, demand and portion size can matter as much at the counter as the cost of beef, though one month of the old series can't prove it. Our take: use the index to understand price pressure, and use real menus for budgeting.
For actual meal costs on the road, our breakdown of daily spending uses checked menu prices; for where plov fits in the food culture and how to eat it, start with the national-dish explainer.
One thing the index can't do is tell you whether a particular plov centre is overcharging: nothing in it describes a restaurant. It's free to read on stat.uz, and the next release will replace every September figure above, so check the latest one before quoting any number here.