Turkmenistan, Ashgabat, July 12 /Trend H.Hasanov/
President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdymuhamedov has approved the development programme and action plan for the country's agricultural sector in 2012-2016, an official Turkmen source said on Thursday.
The document was adopted in order to accelerate the development of this industry and to further increase agricultural production to ensure the abundance of food security through creation of appropriate international standards of competitive industries.
Turkmenistan will begin its cotton campaign in August which will last until October or November. It is planned to collect 1.109.000 tons of the raw product from 550,000 hectares. About 1.100.000 tons of the raw product was harvested last year.
Traditionally, the country exports raw cotton to China, Russia, Britain, South Korea, Turkey, Iran, Indonesia, Singapore, Ukraine and the Baltic countries.
Cotton production (cotton, lint and uluk) is sold through the State Commodity and Raw Materials Exchange of the country. The local textile industry has gained momentum in recent years, developed on the basis of the growth of domestic processing of cultivated cotton.
Turkmenistan has also exported food grain in recent years. In particular, 150,000 tons of wheat from the crop grown in the country in 2010 was sold to foreign markets with domestic at 30,000 tons through the public stock exchange.
The Markets Association of Grain was allowed to put 300,000 tons of wheat from the harvest of 2011 into foreign markets in accordance with a recent presidential decree.
The harvest plan is for 1.600.000 tons this year, the harvesting of grain collection has already collected more than one million tons.
The grain wedge of the country is 860,000 hectares. Most of the acreage was planted with high yielding varieties of wheat which are well established in the soil and climatic conditions of Turkmenistan.