Tajikistan intends to yield 420,000 tons of raw cotton this year, which is 5 percent more than the 2019 cotton target that had been determined at 400,000 tons, according to prognosis of the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade (MoEDT).
According to official statistical data, Tajik farmers last year yielded little more than 400,000 tons of raw cotton.
In 2019, Tajikistan’s cotton-growing districts planted cotton on an area of 185,000 hectares and an average cotton yield per one hectare last year was 2.2 tons.
In 2018, Tajik farmers yielded more than 300,000 tons of raw cotton, which was 22.3 percent fewer than in 2017.
Cotton fiber is sold to businesses in countries like Turkey, China and Russia.
Meanwhile, speaker of Tajikistan’s lower house (Majlisi Namoyandagon) of parliament, Shukurjon Zuhurov, in late November last year doubted the reliability of cotton production statistics and asked the anticorruption agency to find out to what extent the provided cotton production figures correspond to the facts.
The Minister of Agriculture Izatullo Sattori noted at the previous sitting of the Majlisi Namoyandagon that Tajikistan had yielded 398,000 tons of raw cotton in 2019, which was 98,000 more than in 2018. According to him, the cotton yield last year was 2.2 tons per hectare.
Shukurjon Zuhurov, for his part, noted that only 25 percent of the cotton Tajikistan produces is processed into manufactured goods in Tajikistan, while the remainder is exported for manufacturing outside the country.
“It makes us think. Even doubts arise whether the mentioned 400,000 tons of cotton exit in reality or not. Maybe they are only on paper?” Zuhurov wondered.
He asked the first deputy chief of the Agency for Sate Financial Control and Combating Corruption, Jamshed Saidshozoda, present at the meeting, to check that issue and find out to what extent the provided cotton production figures correspond to the facts.
