The fifth international cotton fair involving 300 companies from 33 countries started in Tashkent on 14 October. These participants do not care about many Western organisations that have called for the boycott of Uzbek cotton because it is produced involving forced child labour.

A conference that preceded the fair noted that quality and the stable and timely supplies of Uzbek cotton to world markets were the main merits of Uzbek cotton.

Uzbekistan’s three main foreign trade companies – Uzmarkazimpex, Uzprommashimpex and Uzinterimpex – represent local cotton sellers.

A spokesman for Uzinterimpex said that foreign traders were interested in Bukhara 6, Bukhara 8 and Andijan 35 cotton strains.

Cotton costs $0.66 per pound on the Liverpool Cotton Exchange and Bangladesh is the biggest buyer of Uzbek cotton. It has even set up the Bangladeshi-Uzbek Central Asia Cotton Ltd joint venture which exhibited itself at the fair.

A spokesman for Uzinterimpex said that his company had been taking part in this fair for the fifth time and that its clientele had been growing form year to year.

Dubai Cotton Centre took part in the Uzbek cotton fair for the first time this year but it wants to become a regular at the fair. The company helps to sell Uzbek cotton on the international market.

Dubai Cotton Centre’s spokesman Hasan Hojayev said his company bought cotton elsewhere and took it to its centre in Dubai. “Today we signed a contract to supply 100,000 tonnes of Uzbek cotton to Dubai, and we have buyers for it.”

Asked about international organisations’ call to boycott Uzbek cotton because of child labour involved in its production, many buyers said that they would care only about the quality and price of cotton.

“I know that two years ago the Uzbek government officially banned child labour in cotton fields, which means international organisations achieved their aim,” a foreign businessman said. “Child labour makes great money for local bureaucrats and it hard to break this situation. We are just businessmen, what can we do?”

It seems that in order to prevent journalists from asking uneasy questions, access for journalists to the fair was limited: only journalists of state-owned newspapers are allowed to attend the fair, while all other journalists and ordinary citizens were kept out of the fair.