ASTANA, September 22 — The launch of B5+Italy in Astana, reported on 21 September, gives Italy and the five Central Asian states a standing mechanism to turn last year’s summit diplomacy into investment, industrial partnerships and regional economic cooperation. The Central Asia–Italy Business Forum may look like another event in the region’s crowded calendar of international meetings. The mechanics here are different.
What B5+Italy creates is a platform that operates between high-level summits, linking governments, businesses and economic institutions around practical projects in energy, critical minerals, manufacturing, agriculture, transport and the Middle Corridor. It is a direct follow-up to the first Central Asia–Italy summit, held in Astana in May 2025, which brought together Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and the leaders of the five Central Asian countries.
Italy’s Foreign Ministry has presented the forum as a way to convert that political momentum into investment, industrial cooperation and new opportunities for companies.
From declaration to mechanism
That shift — from political declarations to an institutional mechanism capable of producing commercial results — is why B5+Italy matters. The 2025 summit was an important political signal, demonstrating that Italy sees Central Asia not as five separate markets, but increasingly as a region with common strategic and economic potential. But political summits, however important, do not automatically generate commercial integration.
The more difficult question is what happens between summits. This is precisely where B5+Italy could become consequential.
The new platform is intended to facilitate regular dialogue between governments and businesses, support the preparation of joint investment projects, and expand direct contacts between companies from Italy and Central Asia. Priority areas include industrial production, critical minerals, energy, agribusiness, transport infrastructure, connectivity and the Middle Corridor. Italy already has a substantial economic presence in the region.
Italian-Central Asian trade grew by 46.5 percent between 2019 and 2025, according to Italy’s Foreign Ministry. Rome increasingly sees Central Asia as a market of roughly 80 million people located at the crossroads of Europe and Asia.
The challenge now is to turn this growing interest into a deeper and more diversified economic relationship. There is no shortage of political support for stronger Italy–Central Asia relations; the more fundamental question is whether companies can operate across borders with sufficient predictability and manageable transaction costs.
The barriers that matter
For businesses, connectivity is not limited to railways, ports and logistics corridors. It also means customs procedures, regulatory requirements, certification, investment protection, financing mechanisms, access to information, and the ability to identify reliable local partners. This makes the simplification of procedures for business cooperation one of the most important issues on the agenda.
The launch of B5+Italy creates an opportunity to address precisely these practical barriers. If the platform can help companies navigate administrative procedures, identify partners and move from initial discussions toward concrete projects, it could develop into something more significant than a traditional business forum.
The question should therefore not simply be how much Italy and Central Asia trade today; the more important question is what prevents that trade and investment relationship from becoming significantly larger. There is also an important space between government and business that should not be overlooked: independent policy research, education and skills development. Italian officials have expressed interest in continuing the dialogue through a think-tank format that could bring together policymakers, businesses, academics and experts from Italy and Central Asia.
Such a forum could help identify common priorities not only in trade and investment, but also in research, education and human-capital development. This matters because the next stage of Central Asia’s economic development will depend not only on capital and infrastructure, but also on qualified people, technological expertise and stronger links between universities, research institutions and industry.
A structured expert dialogue could therefore provide an additional bridge between political ambitions and practical cooperation.
What to watch next
The next important step will be the planned ministerial engagement between Italy and the five Central Asian countries. Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani has already expressed his intention to organize a new ministerial meeting with the five countries in order to further strengthen dialogue and cooperation. Such a meeting could help move the agenda from broad political support toward implementation: investment facilitation, trade procedures, connectivity, critical minerals, industrial partnerships, agriculture, technology and energy.
It would also provide another opportunity to prepare the political ground for the next Central Asia–Italy summit, which is planned to take place in the Kyrgyz Republic in 2027. The decision to hold the next leaders’ meeting in the Kyrgyz Republic was included in the joint declaration adopted at the 2025 summit.
If this sequence develops as intended — business platform, ministerial dialogue, then a second leaders’ summit — Italy and Central Asia will have created something increasingly valuable in international diplomacy: continuity between high-level political meetings. The significance of B5+Italy becomes even clearer when viewed against the wider transformation of Central Asia’s external relations.
