Source: APKinform (Ukraine)
Tajikistan currently meets just over 21% of the population’s need for vegetable oil. The Republic spends $170-180 million annually on importing this product, ASIA-Plus reports.
As it is specified, Tajikistan annually needs more than 150 thousand tons of vegetable oil. And the capacity of 72 enterprises engaged in the production of this product can produce 25-30 thousand tons of oil per year. Currently, oil plants with new modern equipment are operating in Dushanbe and Khujand. However, most of the old oil plants need to upgrade their production lines.
It is noted that in the coming years Tajikistan plans to increase oil production by 20% and reduce imports of these products by 7%.
“The production of 100,000 tonnes of oil will require about 833,000 tonnes of oilseeds, and Tajikistan does not have the ability to grow that much raw material,” Industry and New Technologies Minister Sherali Kabir said.
According to the country’s Agriculture Ministry, cotton and oilseed crops cover about 200,000 hectares. The annual harvest of cotton is more than 420 thousand tons, and the harvest of oilseeds, such as flax, safflower, rape, sunflower, sesame and others combined, does not reach 100 thousand tons. It is possible to get up to 25 thousand tons of oil from them.
As APK-Inform reported earlier, Tajikistan is among the top 5 importers of Kazakh sunflower oil. For 3 months of 2024/25 MY Tajikistan increased purchases of sunflower oil from Kazakhstan to 17.8 thousand tons. This is more than the indicators of the same period of last season (17.16 thousand tons) and the season before last (12.07 thousand tons).