Uzbekistan - Economic sectors



Agriculture contributed 28 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 1999 and employed 44 percent of the workforce in 1995. Most agricultural and light industry output is related to cotton, accounting for 30.8 percent of total exports in 1999. Lack of environmental and management reform has plagued the agricultural sector. The cotton crop failed twice, in 1996 and 1998, and remained below the government's target of 4 million tons in 1999. The government's pursuit of self-sufficiency in food production led to some land reserved for cotton being reassigned for food growing.

Industry produced 21 percent of GDP in 1999, employing 20 percent of the workforce in 1995. Manufacturing made up the greatest part of the industrial sector and accounted for 13.9 percent of GDP and 12.8 percent of the workforce in 1999. A car factory in Andijan assembled Daewoo cars from imported components, while an aircraft factory assembled Russian aircraft. The rest of the industrial sector was comprised of truck and bus

assembly, electrical engineering, textiles, agricultural machinery, and agricultural processing. Gold mining and refining is the country's next largest industrial endeavor, accounting for 10.4 percent of GDP in 1999. Most gold is mined at Muruntau in Navoi, where annual output is about 80 tons per year. Gold brings in less money than it did during Soviet times due to a drop in its price in the late 1990s.

Approximately 51 percent of GDP came from services in 1999; the sector employed 36 percent of the workforce in 1995. Economic volatility and isolation, the lack of consumer credit, and government controls have

inhibited the development of a modern services sector. Outside of education and health, there were 398,000 employees in the services sector in 2000, or just 4.5 percent of the total workforce.

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