Speaker of Tajikistan’s lower house (Majlisi Namoyandagon) of parliament, Shukurjon Zuhurov, doubts the reliability of cotton production statistics and asked the anticorruption agency to find out to what extent the provided cotton production figures correspond to the facts. 

The Minister of Agriculture Izatullo Sattori noted at the previous sitting of the Majlisi Namoyandagon that Tajikistan had yielded 398,000 tons of raw cotton this year, which is 98,000 more than last year.  

According to him, the cotton yield this year was 2.2 tons per hectare.  

Shukurjon Zuhurov, for his part, noted that only 25 percent of the cotton Tajikistan produces is processed into manufactured goods in Tajikistan, while the remainder is exported for manufacturing outside the country.

“It makes us think.  Even doubts arise whether the mentioned 400,000 tons of cotton exit in reality or not.  Maybe they are only on paper?” Zuhurov wondered. 

He asked the first deputy chief of the Agency for Sate Financial Control and Combating Corruption, Jamshed Saidshozoda, present at the meeting, to check that issue and find out to what extent the provided cotton production figures correspond to the facts.  

The parliament speaker noted that he had visited a number of cotton-growing districts whose chairpersons had announced the fulfillment of the cotton yielding targets.  “However, I did not see cotton at the cotton-ginning factories and cotton receiving points,” said Zuhurov.  “I understood from their conversations that cotton-ginning factories do not buy cotton due to lack of money and farmers sell it to neighboring districts, where they receive documents  and submit them to the statistics departments.”