Russian news agency Prime-TASS
December 15

The Uzbek government has allowed farmers to sell up to 50 per cent of their cotton output both domestically and abroad thus bringing to an end its monopoly on the market, a representative of the National Cotton Industry Association Uzkhlopkopromsbyt told Prime-Tass. Up to now all cotton exports have been carried out by companies specially created for the purpose by the National Agency for Foreign Economic Relations with farmers selling their entire output to Uzkhlopkopromsbyt.

Under the new rules, the right to trade in cotton will be given to Uzbekistan's commodity exchanges and other entities specializing in cotton trade.

Export auctions will be held at the Uzbek national auction trade company. Uzkhlopkopromsbyt has raised the price it pays to cotton farmers this year by an average of 60 per cent. As a result, Uzbekistan's cotton producers are expected to receive about 40 per cent of the world cotton price this against 20-25 per cent last year.

According to the Uzbek Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources, the country harvested 3.19m t of raw cotton this year, while cotton fibre production is expected to total 1m t. Last year cotton fibre output rose 0.2 per cent on the year to 1,015,000 t.

According to the Macroeconomics and Statistics Ministry, Uzbekistan exported 744.5m dollars worth of cotton fibre in 2001 compared with 843m dollars in 2000.

The share of cotton exports was at 24.3 per cent of the country's overall exports in 2001, down from 27.5 per cent a year before.

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