DUSHANBE, November 17, 2008, Asia-Plus — Prices of wheat and flour will be decreasing in Tajikistan, Akbar Khojayev, the head of the competition development department within the antimonopoly directorate of the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade (MoEDT), said in an interview with Asia-Plus.
However, he found it difficult to say how much the prices would come down, just saying that “world prices for fuel and food products are tending downward.”
“According to survey conducted by the UN FAO, grain harvests in 2008-2009 are expected to be more than 2.2 billion tons, which is 3.8 percent more than in 2007-2008,” Khojayev said
In the meantime, according to the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), Tajik farmers have yielded more than 400,000 tons of wheat so far, while last year, they yielded 649,300 tons of wheat. Tajikistan’s annual requirements in cereals are 1.2 billion tons and Tajik farms are able to meet only 50 percent of the population’s requirements in cereals and the remainder is imported from other countries, primarily Kazakhstan.
An average price for 50-kilgoram sack of grade 1 wheat flour in Dushanbe is now some 105 somoni.
We will recall that speaking to reporters in Dushanbe on November 5, Dr. Axel Schimmelpfennig, head of the IMF International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) mission to Tajikistan, said that according to the IMF estimates, food and fuel prices will be decreasing in 2009. Prices are expected to decrease by 20 percent.
