DUSHANBE, October 23, 2008, Asia-Plus  -- The Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) intends to build two large customs warehouse for storing cotton fiber, Agriculture Minister Qosim Qosimov said. 

According him, the warehouses will be constructed under support of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the World Bank (WB) for farming units.  

“One of them will be built in Khatlon and the other one in Sughd,” the minister said, noting that for storage of their finished certified product the will pay miserable fee – at the rate of 0.1 to 0.5 percent of the cost of one ton of processed cotton fiber.  

Qosimov noted that the ministry and the mentioned international financial institutions had already reached an agreement on providing funds for construction of the customs warehouses. 

“Construction of the customs warehouses will help farming units be out of debts,” said the minister, “Earlier, the cotton-growing farms stored their finished product in warehouse of the cotton-processing enterprises and since they did not have funds to pay for storage of their product opportunely, they had to give raw cotton to cotton ginneries that led to increase of their debts.”