BAKU, Azerbaijan, Mar. 3
By Ilkin Seyfaddini – Trend:
Uzbekistan reduced its imports of white sugar by 76.6 percent to 166,900 tons in volume and by 76.1 percent to $72.6 million in value in 2019, Trend reports with the reference to Committee of Statistics of Uzbekistan.
Such a significant decline in sugar imports in 2019 is due to the fact that since the beginning of 2019 Uzbekistan has been able to resume its stable production of sugar, which amounted to 427,300 tons in physical terms, in monetary terms - 1.9 trillion soum (or 4.5 million soum ($475.6 per ton).
Presently, two enterprises specializing in production of sugar are operating in Uzbekistan - "Khorezm Shakar" JSC with capacity of 1,000 tons of sugar per day (worth $83.25 million), and "Angren Shakar" JSC with similar capacity (worth $108.5 million).
Since the second half of 2017, both companies have begun to significantly reduce production volumes. The reason for this was the devaluation of the national currency in September 2017 (by almost 2 times).
At the beginning of November 2018, JSC Khorezm Shakar received a $20 million loan from one of the largest banks in the country - Uzpromstroybank - to replenish working capital and purchase raw sugar to resume production of white sugar.
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