Uzbek government has approved additional measures to increase production and expand the range of nonfood consumer goods in 2012-2015.

Experts say the current increasing purchasing power of population and industries require rapid expansion of the volume and range of domestically produced nonfood consumer goods, especially finished products. Therefore, these measures are designed to further ensure the increase and diversification of production of modern high-quality and competitive nonfood consumer products for domestic and foreign markets.

In the short term, significant growth is expected in the textiles, leather and footwear industries. For example, leather clothing production is expected to increase 8.2 times, cotton yarn to grow 2.9 times, silk fabric 2.6 times, hosiery production to grow 2.5 times. In 2015, domestic manufacturers plan to produce over 14.2 million pairs of shoes, 60.3 tons of knitted fabric, 295.7 million square meters of cotton fabrics.

In the next few years in general, it is scheduled to implement 36 different projects, including construction of new and modernization of existing enterprises of textile and garment and knitwear industry. Their total cost exceeds $16.7 million, of which $4.6 million are the enterprises’ own funds, $6 million are foreign investments and loans and $6.1 million are loans of commercial banks.

One of the biggest projects will be a new shoes factory in Nurata district of Navoi region built on the basis of joint venture Sugden Poyabzali. The project will cost $4.2 million, including $2.4 million invested foreign partner.

Note that as part of the approved programs on the priorities of industry development for 2011-2015 and the priority measures to improve production and development of new types of competitive products in Uzbekistan, in 2011 domestic businesses put into operation 14 new enterprises in the textile and garment and knitting industry and 15 companies in the leather and shoe industry. In addition, another 14 textile and knitwear and 17 leather shoe factories were able to upgrade and expand their production capacities.

As a result of measures taken to modernize and upgrade the productive capacity of industries producing nonfood consumer goods in 2011, national manufacturers developed production of 48 new types of finished textiles and 24 kinds of leather and footwear products.

During the period of 2005-2011, the volume of textile and garment and knitwear products increased 3.2 times, footwear 3.8 times, and leather 11.6-fold. (Source: Uzbekistan Today newspaper)