DUSHANBE, December 9, 2009, Asia-Plus  -- 182,000 hectares of lands are expected to be allotted for cotton in Tajikistan in 2010, Safar Mahmadiyev, the head of the department for economic policy and forecasting within the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), said in an interview with Asia-Plus.

According to him, cotton farmers plan to yield some 370,000 tons of raw cotton.  “It is possible, if farm produce on average 2.0-2.2 tons of cotton per hectare,” he said.

We will recall that Tajikistan has managed to yield only 295,815 tons of raw cotton from 170,400 hectares this year, while the 2009 cotton target has been determined at 350,000 tons of cotton.

Speaking to reporters in Dushanbe on December 7, Mahmadiyev attributed the failure to fulfill the 2009 cotton target to bad weather conditions and insufficient financing.

In the meantime, Saidmurod Bahriddinov, the head of the MoA crop sector department, told Asia-Plus that the international price of one ton of cotton fiber has risen from 1,00-1,300 U.S dollars in 2008 to more than 1,600 U.S. dollars this year.