Baku, Azerbaijan, July 29
By Fikret Dolukhanov - Trend:
Uzbekistan is planning to increase the volume of agricultural exports by more than twice and bring it up to $ 5 billion by 2020, a representative of the Uzbek joint stock company "Uzagroexport" told Trend July 19.
The company also announced that, "Uzagroexport" is planning to significantly increase total agricultural production - to 25 million tons.
The company said that Uzbekistan increased the volume of agricultural exports by 3.5 times during its first 25 years of independence: from 5.6 million tons in 1991 to 19.7 million tons in 2016.
"The country produces more than 180 types of fresh and processed fruits and vegetables, which are supplied to the markets of more than 80 countries. At the moment, the country ranks second in the world in exports of dried and fourth in exports of fresh apricots. Uzbekistan also ranks seventh in the world in terms of plum exports and eighth in terms of cabbage exports," the company noted.
The growing production and exports create a need to expand and improve the productive base and infrastructure, the representative of "Uzagroexport" said.
"Some 160,000 farms and procurement bases are operating in Uzbekistan at the moment. The acreage for fruit and vegetable products is 721,400 hectares. These products are stored in 1300 cold stores and storage facilities with a capacity of over 800,000 tons," the company stated.
The construction and reconstruction of 197 modern refrigeration chambers and storage facilities for fruits and vegetables with a total capacity of over 100,000 tons have been planned for 2018 in Uzbekistan, the representative of "Uzagroexport" said.
The "Uzagroexport" joint-stock company was established in accordance with the decree of the president of Uzbekistan dated April 7, 2016.
The main objectives of the new organization - to ensure the promotion of domestic fresh and processed fruits and vegetables for export, establishing permanent links with reliable foreign buyers, search and development of new markets, study of supply and demand in foreign markets, as well as conducting in-depth market research.
The unified UzAgro brand has been created in the framework of activity of "Uzagroexport" for export of fruits and vegetables, which is intended to be a guarantee of high quality of products and services for partners in any part of the globe.
It is expected that, the fresh and processed products of agricultural sector and food industry of Uzbekistan will be able to take a worthy place in the international market thanks to the single stable UzAgro trademark.
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