UZBEKISTAN TO PROCESS ITS OWN COTTON AT LAST.

Uzbek prime minister Utkir Sultanov’s December visit to Japan has produced two breakthrough deals for Uzbekistan, one of the world’s largest producers and exporters of raw cotton but which was deprived of a modern textile industry during Soviet rule. Japan’s Marubeni and Mitsubishi conglomerates have reached agreement with the Uzbeklegprom state concern to establish large-scale, export-oriented textile plants in Uzbekistan for processing local cotton. At a cost of $80 million and on a turnkey basis, Marubeni will modernize and expand the Ferghana textile plant to fifteen-fold its current production capacity. Mitsubishi, in turn, intends to build two new plants at a combined cost of $100 million. Most of the financing is to be provided on credit by Japan’s Export-Import Bank and the Japanese partners. The Uzbek side will have a 49 percent stake in each of these joint ventures. Uzbeklegprom’s export revenue is due to increase from a mere $13 million in 1995 to $250 million in 1998. Japan is now poised to hold the lion’s share of investment capital in Uzbekistan’s rapidly-growing textile industry, in which total foreign investment is slated this year to reach $290 million. (Interfax, December 31)

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