Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) -- Uzbekistan is introducing market principles in the cultivation and sale of grain.

President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev signed a resolution "On additional measures to introduce the market principle in the cultivation and sale of grain."

The document was adopted in order to increase the material interest of farms and grain clusters, uninterrupted supply of the domestic market with wheat and flour products, increase the investment attractiveness of the industry by refusing to purchase more than the required amount of grain for state needs.

The resolution approved a proposal to produce a total of 2.55 million tons of wheat at an average of 2.5 tons per hectare of irrigated area for the 2022 crop.

The President approved the purchase of 1.78 million tons of wheat as commodity wheat of the state resource and 266,500 tons of seeds at the expense of the State Support Fund for Agriculture under the Ministry of Finance.

The State Support Fund for Agriculture will accept 500,000 tons of grain for temporary storage from a commercial representative for further sale at exchange auctions by farms and other grain producers.

For the 2022 harvest, the enterprises of the Uzdonmakhsulot system are commercial representatives on behalf of the Fund for the purchase of wheat from producers, storage, and shipment of marketable wheat to buyers.

Payments for commercial wheat purchased for state resources are made by a commercial representative to wheat producers at the expense of the Fund at the following stages:

at the initial stage - at prices set by the Cabinet of Ministers;

at the next stage - based on the average price (average quotation) formed on the exchange, a full recalculation is made with wheat producers;

Commercial wheat, accepted from wheat producers for temporary storage to commercial representatives, is sold in July-August 2022 at exchange trading. At the same time, the costs of transportation (including internal transportation), acceptance, storage and shipment of wheat to the buyer are covered at the expense of the Fund based on the terms of the contract concluded between the commercial representative and wheat producers; the amount of natural loss in the process of acceptance, storage and shipment of wheat to buyers is written off in the manner approved by the Cabinet of Ministers.

Control over the quality and storage of wheat is carried out by the Inspectorate for Control of the Agro-Industrial Complex under the Cabinet of Ministers.

The head of Uzbekistan has established a procedure in accordance with which wheat of the following classes, purchased at the expense of the Fund and accepted for temporary storage from wheat producers, is sold through exchange trading according to schedules approved by the Cabinet of Ministers, without any restrictions:

wheat of class 3 and above - to business entities, regardless of the form of ownership, that have flour production capacities, that have assumed obligations to sell at least 75 percent of the wheat purchased on the exchange through exchange trading;

wheat grades 4 and 5 - to all business entities.

The Ministry of Finance was also instructed to ensure, at the expense of the Fund, the placement of resources in the amount of up to 800 billion soums at the base rate of the Central Bank in commercial banks in order to finance revolving loans for the purchase of wheat on the exchange to enterprises of the Uzdonmakhsulot JSC system.