A meeting of members of the Committee on Economic Policy, Innovative Development and Entrepreneurship and competent authorities, representatives of business and academic communities on horticulture was held in the Senate.
The meeting was attended by deputies of the Senate of Kazakhstan, representatives of the Ministry of Agriculture, leaders of the Kazakh Research Institute of Horticulture and Kazakh Invest National Company.
In his opening speech, Senator Dauren Adilbekov noted that a shortage of domestic high-quality planting material was one of the key challenges in the industry. Raising investment for the development of the horticulture industry should be the main area of development.
As reported Serik Sadykov, the Chairperson of the Kazakh Research Institute of Horticulture, horticultural crops currently occupied 50,000 hectares in Kazakhstan and the annual demand was 7 million fruit tree seedlings. “80% of the required amount is covered by imports. The most expensive ready-to-plant seedlings of fruit trees are imported from Italy, then Spain, Poland, Turkey, Serbia imported a large amount last year,” S. Sadykov said.
In addition, the expert noted that economic issues were complicated by the fact that the import of planting material resulted in cash outflows.
In the course of discussion, the Senate deputies raised the issues of the high cost of domestic seedlings and noted that Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan offered 100 KZT per seedling, while a domestic seedling cost 400 KZT.
The head of the Institute of Horticulture S. Sadykov noted that the current cost of high-quality seedlings grown in compliance with all agricultural technologies was about 280-300 KZT, while Uzbekistan sold seedlings of poor quality for 100 KZT per seedling, while high-quality seedlings cost between 1,000 and 1,500 KZT.
In addition, the meeting participants discussed a lack of strict regulation and standardization in the industry. Deputy Muratbay Zholdasbayev noted that “On the one hand, we are the birthplace of apples, and now we import hundreds of thousands of apples of unknown quality from abroad. We really need to make a regulation, we will work it out together,” he added.
Summing up the meeting, Senator Serik Dzhaxybekov emphasized the critical nature of the issues discussed.
“The state is interested to have the work done and have our own elite seeds to supply, first of all, to domestic market, and sell surpluses to the neighboring markets,” he said.
