Uzbekistan, 25th anniversary | Page 25

management of the land, water and other natural resources resulted in improvement of the melioration, creation of the high-yielding areas of intensive gardening and drip irrigation systems. As a result, today the country is producing over 18 million tons of fruits and vegetables, in comparison with about 4 million tons in 1991. Thanks to structural changes in the agricultural sector, current share of cotton in the total volume of gross agricultural output does not exceed 9%, while the share of grains is about 9%, fruits, vegetables and grapes - 30%, potatoes - 11%, and livestock products exceed 40%. In order to achieve qualitative structural changes in agriculture and development of the economy as a whole, the government of Uzbekistan focuses on gradual reduction by 2020 production and state purchases of cotton from 3.35 million tons to 3 million tons. It is worth to claim that by reducing the production of raw cotton by 350 thousand tons about 170.5 thousand hectares of irrigated land are going to be freed. As a result of optimization of crop areas and introduction of modern agricultural technologies by 2020 Uzbekistan is to bring production of cereal crops up to 8.5 million tons with an increase of 16.4%, increase of potato production by 35%, other vegetables - 30%, fruit and grapes - 21.5%, meat - by 26.2%, milk - by 47.3%, eggs - by 74.5%, fish - by 2.5 times. As mentioned in the World Bank’s report, Uzbekistan is currently among the top ten countries in the world, which in the last year achieved the best results in improving the business environment. Based on deep analysis of trends in global economy and realistic assessment of our resources and capabilities, Uzbekistan had set a target by 2030 to increase GDP of the country by at least 2-fold. Due to drastic structural reforms the country intends to achieve accelerated growth of industry by bringing its share in GDP to 40% against 33.5% in 2015, while share of agriculture to decrease from 16.6% to 10.8%, to reduce energy intensity of GDP by 2 times by introducing energy saving technologies nationwide. The reality of the task can be judged based on the following calculations. In order to achieve the growth of GDP 2 times for 2016-2030, it would be enough to provide average annual growth rate of 4.8%, while over the past 11 years the average GDP growth rate in the country amounted to at least 8%. Uzbekistan’s achievements and milestones are widely recognized by the world community. Last October the World Bank published the rating of «Doing Business», with the fact that Uzbekistan in just one year has risen to 16 positions and ranked as 87th. It should be particularly underlined that according to criteria such as «Starting a Business», Uzbekistan is ranked as 42nd, «enforcing of contracts» - 32nd and «Resolving Insolvency» 75th. According to the indicator «Getting Credit», Uzbekistan for the last three years rose from 154th to 42nd rank improving only over the last year its ranking by 63 positions. 25