BAKU, Azerbaijan, Aug. 26
By Ilkin Seyfaddini - Trend:
Russian producers have significantly increased bitumen export to Uzbekistan, Trend reports citing kursiv.kz.
In 2020, Russia has abolished the duty on bitumen export. As a result, Russian producers in the period from January through July 2020, supplied to Uzbekistan about 80,000 tons of bitumen. As for 2019, Russia's supplies resulted in less than 40,000 tons.
Kazakhstan, which also abolished the export duty and sold about 60,000 tons of bitumen to Uzbekistan during 2019, supplied about 10,000 tons of bitumen in the first seven months of 2020.
Uzbekistan's bitumen market is the most promising market among all Central Asian countries for bitumen exports.
According to the plans of the Government of Uzbekistan in the coming years, the costs of repair and reconstruction of roads will increase by 2 – 2.5 times.
“If this year Uzbekistan plan to import about 150,000 tons, next year this figure may grow up to 200,000 - 250,000 tons. At the same time, Uzbekistan's own bitumen production is about 100,000 tons of bitumen per year,” the message said.
The bulk of Russian bitumen in the first half of the year came to Uzbekistan: shipments in this direction rose to 64,700 tons.
In May 2020, Russian bitumen shipments to Uzbekistan doubled as compared to April 2020, to 13,300 tons.
Dutch Lumidea engineering company will build a plant for the production of asphalt and concrete products in Khiva city in Uzbekistan’s Fergana region, according to the signed agreement in September 2019. Lumidea Engineering will construct an asphalt plant for $15 million.
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