The launch of B5+Italy in Astana matters because it 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. Its significance, however, lies in what it creates between high-level summits: a platform linking governments, businesses, and economic institutions around practical projects in energy, critical minerals, manufacturing, agriculture, transport, and the Middle Corridor.
Sapargali Shalgimbayev.
B5+Italy 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.
That shift from political declarations to an institutional mechanism capable of producing commercial results is why B5+Italy matters.
From summit diplomacy to economic infrastructure
The 2025 summit was an important political signal. It demonstrated that Italy sees Central Asia not as five separate markets, but increasingly as a region with common strategic and economic potential.
Domenico Palmieri.
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.
The real obstacle is not political will
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.
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?
A role for think tanks
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.
The next test: ministerial diplomacy
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, and then a second leaders’ summit — Italy and Central Asia will have created something increasingly valuable in international diplomacy: continuity between high-level political meetings.
Italy is part of a larger transformation
The significance of B5+Italy becomes even clearer when viewed against the wider transformation of Central Asia’s external relations.
The region has witnessed a rapid expansion of the C5+1 model, through which external powers engage the five Central Asian states collectively.
The latest example came only days before the Italy–Central Asia business forum.
On Sept. 16, South Korea hosted the first Central Asia–Republic of Korea summit, bringing together the leaders of Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan with the South Korean president. The summit focused heavily on critical minerals, energy, supply chains, industrial cooperation, technology, and investment. More than 70 agreements and memoranda were reportedly concluded during the broader summit process.
The significance of the Korean example is not simply the number of agreements.
It demonstrates that the C5 format is becoming increasingly useful as an instrument through which external powers can engage Central Asia as a regional economic space.
This does not mean that Central Asia is becoming a formal bloc. The five countries retain different economic structures, national priorities, and foreign-policy interests. Bilateral relations will remain essential.
But the regional format is becoming complementary to bilateral diplomacy.
For external partners, it offers access to a larger regional market and a coordinated political dialogue. For the Central Asian states, it provides an additional mechanism for presenting regional priorities and attracting investment, technology, and expertise.
Competition is creating opportunity
The growing number of C5+1 initiatives also reflects a broader change in how the world perceives Central Asia.
The region is increasingly relevant to discussions about supply-chain diversification, critical minerals, energy security, transport connectivity, food security, and new trade routes between Europe and Asia.
Italy has a potentially distinctive role in this process.
It is not simply another external power seeking access to Central Asian resources. Italy has considerable industrial and manufacturing expertise, strong agricultural and engineering capabilities, logistics companies, and a large network of small and medium-sized enterprises.
At the same time, Central Asian economies are looking for partners capable of providing not only capital, but also technology, industrial expertise, and access to international value chains.
The potential complementarity is therefore considerable.
But potential alone is not enough.
The real test of B5+Italy will be whether it can help businesses overcome the practical barriers that currently stand between political agreements and commercial projects.
A quiet but important milestone
The Astana forum therefore deserves to be viewed as more than another business gathering.
Its importance lies in the institutional architecture being built around it.
The 2025 leaders’ summit created political momentum. B5+Italy creates an economic mechanism. The forthcoming ministerial dialogue can provide political direction. A possible think-tank track can help generate ideas and identify areas of convergence. And the planned 2027 summit in the Kyrgyz Republic can consolidate the progress made.
Taken together, these developments suggest that Italy–Central Asia relations are moving from episodic diplomacy toward a more continuous partnership.
The development is also significant for Central Asia itself.
As more global and middle powers return to the region with concrete economic proposals, the C5 format is gaining practical value. The question is no longer simply whether Central Asia can attract international attention. It is increasingly about whether the five countries can use that attention to build mutually beneficial projects, diversify external partnerships, and strengthen their collective economic position.
The launch of B5+Italy may have passed relatively quietly in the international media. But beneath the headlines, a more important process is underway: the gradual construction of a denser network of institutions linking Central Asia with the major economic centers of Europe and Asia.
For Italy, the task is to turn political interest into business reality.
For Central Asia, the task is to ensure that growing international competition translates into investment, technology, industrial capacity, skills, and greater connectivity.
And for the C5 format, the expanding number of external partnerships suggests that its most important phase may only now be beginning.
The authors are Sapargali Shalgimbayev, the president of the CFive Intellectual Platform, and Domenico Palmieri, the secretary general of the Italian Institute for Asia (ISIA).
The article is published as part of the partnership between The Astana Times and CFive think tank.
