Turkmenistan, Ashgabat, May 15 / corr Trend G.Hasanov /
The Central Asian countries could play an important role in the solution of the world food crisis, UN News Center reports citing Turkmenistan's permanent representative at UN Aksoltan Atayeva.
She was appealing to a session of the Commission on sustainable development at the UN headquarters in Hew York. The gathering is focused on the development of agriculture, land tenure, desertification, land degradation and development of agrarian sector in Africa.
Atayeva initiated opening a regional office of UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Ashgabat.
The Central Asia is rich with reserves and all countries of the region are agrarian. "The opportunities of developing agriculture in the region cannot be limited to measures at the national level. In this respect opening a FAO office for Central Asia is very important. Turkmenistan's government could offer all facilities for functioning of this office in Ashgabat," Atayeva added.
Atayeva spoke about Turkmenistan's efforts on rural survival and agriculture reforming. "New stage in agriculture reforms is intended to bring the agrarian production to international level, supply the local market with high quality and ecologically safe goods, ensure abundance of food in the country," the ambassador said.
She said the authorities offer favorable conditions to develop the agrarian sector by providing privileged loan, privileged taxation terms, technique and fertilizers. The government undertakes around 50% of expenses for technical services. The population is free from taxes for cattle breeding and poultry, as well as farmlands.
The session will end on May 19, 2009. The commission on sustainable development is a subsidiary body of the UNB Economic and Social Council. It unites one member from each 53 member-countries, elected among UN member-countries and specialized establishments on the basis of fair geographic distribution principle.
Turkmenistan has achieved self-supplying grains over the past few years.
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