Azernews.Az

Turkmenistan plans to reap around 1.050 million tons of cotton from an area of a half million hectares this year, the Neutral Turkmenistan newspaper reported.

The crops are still being grown. "The prospects for the crop are good, especially given last year, when the country's cotton growers reaped about 1.235 million tons of harvest, considerably exceeding the target by 11 percent," the article said.

Around 5,500 pieces of technology from companies such as John Deere, Case, Belarus, Minsk Tractor Plant-80 were involved in the spring sowing, when 70,000 tons of cotton seed was planted. 15 types of "white gold" will be harvested. The largest areas set aside for cotton growing is 165,000 hectares in Mary Velayat (province), about 120,000 hectares are in the velayats of Akhal and Lebap, 140,000 hectares are in the Velayat of Dashoguz and 5,000 hectares are in the velayat of Balkan.

The newspaper also says that the status of payments for over-planned crops, which came into force in 2012, became the impetus for increasing production. It is planned to allocate roughly 30 percent in interest premium to pay for deliveries of over-planned volumes of crop and daily payments for the manual collection of crude cotton.

The agricultural producers also got the right to independently sell the reaped over-planned crop through the state commodity and raw material exchange.