BAKU, Azerbaijan, March 29. The Uzbek BMB Trade Group company plans to increase the harvest of saffron grown jointly with the Italian Energy Systems company to 20 tons by 2024-2025, the Adviser to the General Director of the company on public relations and media Bakhodir Kamilov told Trend.
"In the coming years, BMB Trade Group, together with an Italian company, aims to expand the area of the saffron plantation to 2,200 hectares," Kamilov said.
According to him, back in October 2019, Italian partners expressed interest in implementing projects for the cultivation and processing of saffron in Uzbekistan, as well as for its export together with BMB Trade Group.
According to Kamilov, as a result of the agreements reached with the Italian company, in 2021, saffron plantations were created on an area of 150 hectares in the Bakhmal district of the Jizzakh region of Uzbekistan.
The adviser to the general director also emphasized that the implementation of the saffron growing project allows for solving important socially significant issues in rural areas of the country.
"Thus, during the season of planting and harvesting saffron, more than 4,000 permanent and about 200,000 temporary jobs were created. High employment of women is mainly achieved, the unemployment rate among which is traditionally higher compared to able-bodied men," Kamilov said.
He also noted that the first batch of saffron exported to Italy in 2021 received high marks, and the products were assigned the first category based on the results of the analysis in foreign laboratories.
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