Baku, Azerbaijan, February 11
Trend:
The US is ready to consider the issue of granting Uzbekistan trade benefits as part of the General System of Preferences (GSP), as the country is taking measures to eradicate forced labor, Trend reports with reference to the Uzbek Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Uzbek delegation led by Deputy Prime Minister Tanzila Narbayeva, met in Washington with deputy assistants to the United States Trade Representative for the application of the general system of preferences, Erland Herfindahl.
"Herfindahl informed on the process of consideration of the use of SHGs duty-free trade regime in Uzbekistan at the present time, which, according to him, is caused by the problems of forced labor," the statement said.
The American official thanked for the information provided, which, in his opinion, would be useful in developing appropriate recommendations for The US president administration, Uzbek Foreign Ministry added.
In September 2018, the US Department of Labor excluded Uzbekistan’s cotton from the list of goods produced using child labor. American side stated that Uzbek cotton was included in this list on the basis of 2002–2008 data, when schools attracted children to the cotton campaign from the age of 7 years.
In September 2017, the President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev promised to end the forced labor in the country and reaffirmed the government’s commitment to cooperating with the ILO. In February 2018, the ILO said that Uzbekistan stopped systematically attracting children to pick cotton, and in November, monitoring data from the organization showed that over 90 percent of cotton pickers in the country in 2018 participated in this process voluntarily.