BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 3
By Ilkin Seyfaddini - Trend:
The Government of Uzbekistan pays great attention to the introduction of European standards in the textile production sector, a representative of Uzbekistan Textile and Garment Industry Association (Uztextileprom) told Trend in an interview.
ISO quality standards are introduced in almost all enterprises of the Association's member enterprises. A number of large enterprises have Business Social Compliance Initiative (BSCI) certificates, and established cooperation with international scientific institutes such as Hohenstein, KATRI, TUV and others.
“Association, together with German International Cooperation Agency (GIZ), started the project on sustainable development and added value in cotton industry, to introduce managers and agronomists of cotton-textile clusters to Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) quality standard. The trainings are conducted by international experts from the Organic Agriculture Research Institute (FiBL, Switzerland) and BCI certified experts,” stated the representative.
In 2019, the first organic cotton in Uzbekistan was grown and certified. This year, Uzbekistan planned to grow organic cotton on 1,000 hectares, and within the GIZ project cotton will be grown on 10,000 hectares, according to BCI standards.
Russia, China, Kazakhstan and Turkey are the main consumers of textile products from Uzbekistan, State Committee on Statistics of Uzbekistan reported earlier.
“Presently, Uzbekistan is capable to export yarns and fabrics to China, despite the fact that China is the leader in this field. The Baltic countries also show big interest in the product. Among other European countries, Poland is one of the largest importers of Uzbek textiles," stated the representative.
The Government of Uzbekistan is working on obtaining status of a beneficiary country of European Union's system of preferences (GSP+) for Uzbek textile products, which will allow exporting the products to the EU market without duties.
“We expect that following obtaining a GSP+ beneficiary country status, textile exports to the EU will increase several times,” noted the representative of Uztextileprom.
Uzbekistan is the sixth cotton manufacturer in the world. By the government decision, the country has completely abandoned the export of cotton fiber since 2019.
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