On June 8, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev chaired a videoconference on ensuring employment through the development of agriculture and entrepreneurship, as well as increasing the production of food products.

This year, the employment program provides for the creation of 457 thousand permanent jobs. The main sources of achieving this goal are agriculture, entrepreneurship, trade and services.

It is possible to employ 150 thousand people by organizing trade and services along main roads, creating special streets in cities and district centers.

Another big reserve for creating jobs is the efficient use of land. In January this year, an experiment was launched to allocate sown land to young people, and its results were found satisfactory. The procedure for granting agricultural land to the unemployed population for rent for 10 years for dehkan farming will be introduced based on the experiment started in Surkhandarya.

Starting this year, almost 100 thousand hectares of land released due to the reduction of sown areas for wheat will be provided to the unemployed for the creation of dehkan farms. After the cotton harvest, an additional 100,000 hectares of land will be released for this purpose.

“Land provision to young people was an experiment. Now we are moving to a larger system. We transfer the land to the real owners – the people. Hokims, sector managers need to determine which areas for cotton and grain will be reduced, and give them to the unemployed. And observe justice in doing so. This will serve to employ hundreds of thousands of people”, Shavkat Mirziyoyev said.

Responsible officials were instructed to supply seeds and seedlings to the population who received the land, to finance the purchase of harvested products.

It is no secret that the issue of land allocation was the opaquest and most susceptible to corruption. Therefore, today, on June 8, the President signed a Decree on measures to ensure equality and transparency in land relations, reliable protection of land rights and turning it into a market asset”.

From now on, the practice of direct and gratuitous provision of land for entrepreneurship will be completely discontinued, and the land will be sold as property or leased on the same and transparent terms for everyone – through an electronic auction. All powers of hokims of districts and cities related to the allocation and return of land have been abolished.

The Head of the state mentioned the importance of this document and gave instructions for organizing its implementation at places, ensuring justice and legality.

Another issue related to the well-being of the population is the stability of food prices.

According to the data, since the beginning of the year, prices for beef in the domestic market have increased by 3.2 percent, lamb – by 4 percent, poultry products – by 3.3 percent.

“Lowering prices does not mean forcing entrepreneurs and livestock breeders to sell their products at a low price. First of all, it is necessary to increase the supply on the market”, the President said.

The main attention should be paid to areas that give high results in a short time. One of these industries is poultry farming.

For example, a bird needs 1.7 kilograms of feed, and cattle-8 kilograms of feed to gain 1 kilogram of weight. However, Uzbekistan produces little poultry meat and eggs per capita.

In this regard, new mechanisms were identified at the meeting to support poultry farming. The amount of subsidies for the production of eggs will be increased by 3 times, for the procurement of poultry meat – by 2 times. Producers of feed and poultry products will be reimbursed part of the loans received for working capital replenishment and implementation of poultry projects, in the part exceeding the base rate of the Central Bank.

Part of the cost of projects on creating modern complexes for cutting poultry will be compensated. The tax rates on profits, property, land and water for poultry enterprises will be reduced by 50 percent.

The state will allocate $50 million through Microcreditbank for the implementation of relevant projects.

Officials have been instructed to implement these benefits and help enterprises reach full capacity.

The importance of organizing mini-incubators and freezing storage facilities in mahallas based on private partnership, expanding poultry farming in households was noted.

The task was set to reorganize the activities of the Research Institute of Animal Husbandry, Poultry and Fish Culture, to create appropriate local bird breeds. 10 billion UZS will be allocated for the provision of the institute with the necessary equipment and the delivery of breeds.

Measures on increasing meat production through launching more than a thousand projects in the livestock sector and 317 projects in fish farming were considered.

This year, taking into account the expected water shortage, 200 billion UZS will be allocated for drilling wells. At the expense of these funds, it is possible to establish the cultivation of forage crops on at least 10 thousand hectares of land.

At the meeting, hokims presented information on what measures will be taken to reduce unemployment, increase food production and ensure price stability.

Source