The Bezdek--Pach conjecture asserts that the maximum number of pairwise touching positive homothetic copies of a convex body in $\Re^d$ is $2^d$. Nasz\'odi proved that the quantity in question is not larger than $2^{d+1}$. We present an improvement to this result by proving the upper bound $3\cdot2^{d-1}$ for centrally symmetric bodies. Bezdek and Brass introduced the one-sided Hadwiger number of a convex body. We extend this definition, prove an upper bound on the resulting quantity, and show a connection with the problem of touching homothetic bodies.