Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 8
By Nigar Guliyeva – Trend:
Uzbekistan intends to legitimize the sale of gold bullion to tourists, and facilitate their export abroad, said Aziz Abdukhakimov, the chairman of the Uzbek State Committee for Tourism Development.
"Today one of the main trends is shopping tourism, for example, travelers from China and India are very interested in traveling to those countries where they can buy gold, they are very interested in this. This is a fairly large tourist flow. Representatives of these countries have such a peculiar tradition as to buy gold items during travels, which is what we expect," Abdukhakimov said.
He noted that the sale of gold plates in range of 10- 200 grams will be arranged in the near future in Uzbekistan.
He noted that it would bring significant revenue to the state, since gold costs much more at retail price than the large parties that the country now supplies abroad.
In the next two months, the country is expected to prepare a draft government decision to allow the sale of gold bars to foreigners and significantly simplify the procedure for exporting jewelry.
Today, foreigners can export gold from Uzbekistan, intended only for personal use, in limited quantities.
For three years, the output of silver products is planned to increase by 6.2 times - from $112,000 in 2018 to $760,500 in 2020, and from gold - 2.4 times, from $16.4 million to $39.6 million.
In 2020, it is planned to export jewelry for almost $ 14 million.
The number of tourists who visited Uzbekistan in 2017 exceeded 2.5 million, which is 24 percent more than in 2016. More than 100 hotels launched activity in 2017.