Tajikistan plans to raise its grain crop to 1.0 million tonnes this year, or some 17 percent more than the 853,700 tonnes harvested last year, a senior agriculture official said on Monday. The Central Asian State targeted a 950,000 tonne harvest last year but failed to fulfil the plan due to winter. In line with a government plan, the country of seven million hopes to boost its grain output to 1.5 million tonnes by 2015.
"The share of wheat in this year's crop has yet to be determined," Sobirdzhon Khalikov, senior expert at the Agriculture Ministry's Cereals Department, told Reuters.
Last year Tajikistan harvested 725,645 tonnes of wheat, up from 660,000 tonnes in 2003. Khalikov said 112,600 hectares of land have been sown with winter grains and another 135,800 will be sown in the spring. Total area sown with grains to the 2004 harvest was 304,000 hectares. Tajikistan, the poorest of the 15 ex-Soviet republics with an economy ravaged by a 1992-97 civil war, consumes around 1.2 million tonnes of grain a year. It covers the deficit of grain by imports, mostly from regional neighbour Kazakhstan.
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