August 22, 2014
Uzbekistan, China to Move to New Phase of Relations. 2
investments: production of the building materials. 4
Feeding Large-Scale Construction. 4
Nanjing-2014: Medal-sets of Uzbek athletes. 5
POLICY
Uzbekistan, China to Move to New Phase of Relations
During his state visit to the People’s Republic of China, President of the Republic of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov on August 20 met with Premier of the PRC Li Keqiang.
It was noted during the meeting that the current visit by President Islam Karimov will facilitate the further consolidation and development of cooperation between our two countries and afford a new impetus to the steadfast enhancement of strategic partnership relations.
The President of Uzbekistan stressed that during the talks in Beijing the two sides signed more than twenty documents concerning projects for a total sum of 5.2 billion US dollars, along with trade agreements for 800 million dollars. Thus the value of deals reached 6 billion dollars.
Li Keqiang offered a high appraisal of the outcomes of the visit and pointed out that Uzbekistan has been rigidly adhering to the path it had opted for, making colossal achievements in the process of its advancement. China is willing to keep with developing cooperation with Uzbekistan on the basis of principles of mutual confidence, respect and reciprocal interest, as well as those of strategic partnership.
At the meeting it was underscored in particular that both Uzbekistan and China wield a tremendous potential for a steady expansion of mutually advantageous cooperation, and that the present state visit of President Islam Karimov opens up new opportunities for this.
The two sides exchanged views on issues pertaining to the realization of agreements reached at the highest level, the comprehensive development and consolidation of cooperation in trade-economic, investment, cultural-humanitarian areas.
Later the day, President Islam Karimov traveled to the ancient city of Xi’an in the Shaanxi Province.
The history of this town in the heart of China dates back to more than 3,000 years. According to some data, some time in its history Xi’an was the biggest city, in terms of population, not only in China, but also in the whole world. During the reign of 13 imperial dynasties, it used to be the capital of the country.
There are numerous ancient graveyards in the outskirts of the city that used to be one of important crossroads of the Great Silk Road. Notably, it is here that the complex of burial of the Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi with his terracotta army was discovered.
The introduction of President Islam Karimov to the antique monuments of Xi’an started from the museum of terracotta army. More than eight thousand soldiers in full combat attire, as well as warfare chariots, made of baked clay reproduce the mighty army of those times. They were discovered in 1974 during excavations in the surroundings of the graveyard of Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi who united the country in 221 BC. The terracotta army was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1987.
The head of our state left a note in the Book of Honorable Guests of the museum.
President Islam Karimov reviewed the ancient city walls of Xi’an.
On the square by the main eastern gates of the walls, a ceremony took place, which is organized for exclusively the most revered and dearest guests of the city – the official handing of a symbolic key from Xi’an to the leader of Uzbekistan.
The wall constituting a powerful defense facility engirdling the historic part of the city was built during the reign of the Ming Dynasty in 15-17th centuries. The wall used to be surrounded by deep ditches with water. Bridges over them used to be flipped from several fortresses, and all this served as a reliable defense of the city.
It is noteworthy that the height of the wall is 15 meters on average, and it is 12 meters in width. All types of vehicles of those times, including heavy military ordnance and combat units, used to be driven on it.
President Islam Karimov said that Xi’an is by right one of the most attractive cities of China owing to not only its inimitable historic monuments, but also it mounting economic might.
During his trip to Xi’an, the head of our state met with Shaanxi Province Party Committee Secretary – Chairman of the Congress of People’s Representatives Zhao Zhengyuong and Governor of the Province Lou Qinjan.
It was especially stressed that the state visit of President Islam Karimov to China proves fruitful. The conversation participants exchanged views on issues related to the enlargement of direct contacts between administrative-territorial entities of Uzbekistan and the PRC, Samarkand and Xi’an in particular.
It is worth noting that the idea of establishing sister relations between Samarkand and Xi’an was voiced during the state visit of the PRC President Xi Jinping to Uzbekistan in September 2013.
Between the consolidation of ties of the native city of the President of China Xi Jinping with the ancient city of Samarkand and the trip to Xi’an by the President of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov, there is a deep symbolic meaning. Mutual confidence and respect between the two heads of state are the foundation for a dynamic development of cooperation of the two countries and serve for the further enhancement of bonds between our two peoples.
The state visit of President of the Republic of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov to the People’s Republic of China, thanks to its political and economic upshots, and as a high embodiment of human relations, will take an important place in the history of cooperation between our two nations and raise it to a qualitatively new level.
(Source: Press-service of the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan)
economy
Go Ahead for Green Produce
Contemporary geopolitical conditions may allow Uzbekistan to additionally benefit from the exports of green produce. Above all this is to do with the recent ban imposed by Russia on the import of fruits and vegetables from the EU, USA, Australia and Norway. Experts rightly suggest that the niche markets should not remain empty. Russian companies are already selecting new partners whereby Uzbekistan is frequently mentioned.
It has been a while since the government agricultural sector began actively developing its export deliveries to the CIS markets, particularly to Russia. However, the potential of the agricultural sector is simply incomparable to the volumes of exports. Foreign markets have long known Uzbekistan for its grapes and apples, apricots and pears, cherries and plums, queen apples, melons and cucurbits crops. The growth of exotic fruits such as figs, pomegranates, date plums and others also takes place in the country. According to expert valuations, today’s agricultural sector produces 16 million tons of horticultural produce. Since independence, the country generated $5 billion from fruits and vegetables. The last three years especially have seen the exports of agricultural produce increase more than threefold.
However, these numbers can be substantially greater. The main problem here is not the lack of output volumes but the insufficient branching out of the infrastructure accounting for exports in horticultural produce. It is important to understand that the food industry has its own specifics. It requires special means of storage, temperature controls, packaging, refrigerated trailers and carriages and many other variables. These later mentioned means still have some space to develop for Uzbekistan.
Despite significant movements in this sector, national companies still do not have all the necessary infrastructures. Modern resources and technologies that keep produce fresh, for instance, shock freezing and storing in neutral gas are still not possessed by the industry. Although this is the case, much work is being done to obtain such means. In the last few years 274 modern horticultural produce refrigerating and storage chambers, with a total volume of 190 thousand tones, were serviced. There are newly adopted neutral gas storage capacities, reaching more than three thousand tons of horticultural produce, being put into use within the Navoi Free Industrial Economic Zone. These amounts are then transported by airfreight into the European and Asian markets. The first half of 2014 on its own saw the creation of 29 new refrigerating chambers that can store a total of 13.5 thousand tons of horticultural goods. There are altogether more than 1,300 storage chambers that can hold over 630 thousand tons of fruits and vegetables. Each year they get filled with the main types of horticultural produce. This allows securing stable internal market prices and guarantees the supply of export deliveries during the winter-spring season.
(Source: «Uzbekistan Today» newspaper)
investments: production of the building materials
Feeding Large-Scale Construction
Any society strives after development. Most metropolises originated from a few huts whose builders used wood, rock, thatch and earth to develop their settlements. However, humans always wanted their structures to be more beautiful, more solid and bigger. Today, thousands of square meters of residential, industrial and communal facilities go into service throughout the world. In order to erect them, the construction industries use growingly advanced building materials. Some of them are produced even through application of space technologies.
Building materials industries are probably among the most dependent parts of the industrial sectors of the economies, which is primarily because of the fact that the consumers of building materials – construction and development companies – are extremely sensitive to market changes. In crisis times, it is the construction sites that are frozen first, and hence the production of the building materials drops. Therefore, many experts believe the construction materials industries can be expected to act like litmus paper tests – their statistics clearly reflect the general state of an economy.
The domestic market of building materials has undergone a number of substantial changes in the past twenty years. In the early 1990s, after the traditional logistical links between the companies based in different CIS countries had broken, Uzbekistan had to start its own production of many types of building materials almost from scratch. This problem was compounded by the fact that the production of the building materials industry in Uzbekistan in the Soviet times had been fairly limited though Uzbekistan had – and still has – Central Asia’s largest natural deposits of raw materials for manufacture of building materials. Geologists have discovered in the country over 500 deposits of raw minerals for making bricks, cement, and expanded clay. There are deposits of various types of rock to saw out for building purposes, gypsum, limestone, concrete aggregate and other minerals. Today, dozens of technologically advanced manufacturers use them to produce binding substances, thermal insulation and roofing materials, as well as glass, asbestos cement and other products. It must be noted that the above number of the deposits is never final: Uzbekistan still goes on with its mineral exploration, which proves to be quite fruitful.
Although the country boasts such rich natural resources, it could not launch production of a wide range of building materials products quickly. That was why large quantities of imported ones filled its domestic market. Many of them did not meet the necessary quality requirements and so never guaranteed durability of the structures made from them. The situation could be radically changed only by systemic reforms in the building materials industry through the elaboration and implementation of domestic production support and development programs. With this to be done, it was important to understand that the governmental support would be effective only at the beginning. Later, the industry had to start using growth stimulation free market economy mechanisms and attracting private investors.
With regard to this, the year 1997 saw a milestone change in the industry: the domestic producers of building materials had been privatized. Most of them voluntarily joined the new joint-stock company O’zqurilishmateriallari, which was set up to coordinate the development of the sector through modernization and attraction of foreign investment and expertise. The experts of the company worked out special development programs for the industry. They were aimed at increasing the production and expanding the range of the building materials products, introducing advanced technologies, and optimizing manufacture of certain materials as to location. In 2000 – 2010, there were over 150 projects implemented in the industry. Its production increased more than twofold; its exports grew by 9.34 times. Those years saw launches of new domestic manufacturers of plasterboards, various powders, polypropylene pipes for hot and cold water supply systems, foamed concrete, acrylic sanitary ware, vermiculite insulation, facing stones, wall and roofing materials, paints, lacquers and other new modern construction products.
Foreign investors played an important part in this process of the industry’s growth. It is worth noting that Uzbekistan chose them quite carefully, cooperating only with the leading companies that had earned a good reputation for high quality products and commitment to the use of the most advanced technologies. Some foreign producers of building materials came to Uzbekistan to set up their own manufacturing facilities, while some others were willing to modernize the existing local companies. This strategy produced outstanding results in just ten years’ time. Among the examples stands out the successful business activities of the German company Knauf in Uzbekistan. In 2006, the manufacturer bought the government stake in the company Bukhorogips, which was on the verge of bankruptcy then. Knauf used the facilities of Bukhorogips to set up an Uzbek-German joint venture with a two-year modernization investment program to implement. Under the scheme, the joint enterprise imported mining machinery, resumed the extraction of gypsum rock and the production of gypsum powder. The year 2009 saw a significant step forward in the activities of the joint venture: it launched production of a range of new gypsum-based powders and, besides, announced construction of a gypsum board factory. In order to deliver the equipment and machinery for it from Europe to Bukhoro Region, the joint venture had to use more than 140 heavy-duty trucks. The factory started production early in April 2011. Earlier the same year, Knauf representatives also announced that they planned to invest about $50 million in their manufacturing facilities in Bukhoro Region.
The mutually beneficial cooperation with foreign companies in the domestic building materials industry is also proved by the Uzbek-British joint venture Stroy Max Invest, which built a foamed concrete factory with an annual capacity of 54,000 square meters in Uzbekistan, and the South Korea’s Jaal & Bridge International. LTD manufacturing 6 million high-quality bricks a year in the country. Currently, tiles production projects to invest in by Chinese, Iranian and Russian companies are being negotiated.
Uzbekistan also actively uses foreign investment to modernize its own manufacturing facilities in the industry. For instance, the Turkish company Dal Teknik Makina Ticaret Ve Sanayi AS supplied modern equipment and machinery for Jizzah Cement Plant. Launched this year, the latter has an annual capacity of 350,000 tons of white cement and 760,000 tons of portland cement, and is currently the republic’s most advanced cement manufacturer. Last year, Uzbekistan’s building materials industry underwent a comprehensive technical audit, which led to a decision to renew and upgrade 226 units of obsolete equipment. To date, the companies of the sector have replaced over 250 units worth $9.1 million, beating the target set for today.
Uzbekistan’s producers of building materials have already fully met the demand of the country’s domestic market. Currently, they are working on increasing their exports. In order to have a success in doing so, they will have to carry out certain tasks. One of them is to improve the quality of their products to meet the required international standards. Partially, they have already achieved this goal – by modernization and use of modern technologies. In 2013, Uzbekistan’s exports of building materials grew by 15.6% to $74.2 million YOY. By the first half of 2014, the value of its exports exceeded $42.9 million with the growth rate of 15.5% compared with the same period last year. Afghanistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, the UAE and Russia have been the major importers of Uzbekistan’s building materials.
(Source: «Uzbekistan Today» newspaper)
sport
Nanjing-2014: Medal-sets of Uzbek athletes
Uzbekistan national team won the first gold medal of the Nanjing 2014 Youth Olympic Games.
Member of Uzbekistan on shooting Vladimir Svechnikov became a champion of the Second Summer 2014 Youth Olympic Games at the 10m Air Pistol Mixed International Teams Final of shooting event.
He paired with Lidia Nencheva of Bulgaria to win the gold medals of the 10m Air Pistol Mixed International Teams Final of shooting event in Nanjing.
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Uzbekistan national team won the second gold medal of the Nanjing 2014 Youth Olympic Games.
Judoka Sukhrob Tursunov of Uzbekistan became a winner of the Nanjing 2014 Youth Olympic Games in Mixed International Team tournament of the Nanjing 2014 Youth Olympic Games in China.
He was member of ROUGE team, which included representatives of Uzbekistan, Portugal, Puerto Rica, Argentina, Netherlands, Russia and France. The team defeated GEESINK in final to clinch gold medal.
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Uzbekistan national team won the fifth medal of the Nanjing 2014 Youth Olympic Games.
Umida Abdullaeva of Uzbekistan clinched the fifth medal of Uzbekistan and Youth Olympic Games in China in taekwondo competition at the weight category of 63 kg.
In final bout, Abdullaev was beaten by Kendall Yount from the United States with the score 2-4 and won the silver medal.
(Source: UzDaily.com)
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