BAKU, Azerbaijan, Sept. 17
By Klavdiya Romakayeva - Trend:
Over the past 10 years, the volume of water resources in Uzbekistan has decreased by 12 percent, particularly this year it decreased by 15 percent compared to last year, Trend reports with reference press service of the President of Uzbekistan.
The issue was discussed at meeting chaired by the President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev, dedicated to measures for the introduction of conservation technologies and the implementation of public-private partnership projects in the water sector.
To ensure the operation of over 5,000 pumps for irrigation of 2.5 million hectares of land, eight billion kilowatt-hours of electricity and 2.4 trillion soums ($234 million) of budgetary funds are annually spent.
On the average, 800,000 soums ($78) are spent from the budget for the supply of water by pumps per hectare of land. As a result of furrow irrigation, about 5-6 billion cubic meters or 20 percent of water is lost in the fields every year.
It was noted at the meeting that water-saving technologies have been introduced only on 285,000 hectares, which is seven percent of the land. In this regard, the lags are especially noticeable in the Kashkadarya, Bukhara and Khorezm regions.
In this regard, it is planned to bring the area of land with water-saving technologies to 600,000 hectares next year.
Instructions were given on the allocation of the necessary funds from the state budget for these purposes, the provision of subsidies to cover part of the costs of entrepreneurs, as well as loans to farms and clusters through commercial banks with the involvement of funds from international financial institutions.
Another problem that hinders the rational use of water is that today only two percent of more than 3,000 water metering stations and 2.5 percent of 400 large water structures are equipped with automated control systems.
In this regard, the Ministry of Water Resources was instructed to introduce an automated system for monitoring water in real time at 150 posts by the end of this year and in all posts starting from next year.
This year, water tax benefits for agricultural enterprises have been canceled. At the same time, the tax rate for water use has been reduced by 50 percent. The President stressed the need to maintain this reduced rate next year.
The tasks of bringing the methodology for calculating irrigation rates in line with the requirements of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), stimulating consumers who installed water meters have been identified.
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