OREANDA-NEWS. August 26, 2008. Azerbaijan Agricultural Sector announced expansion of animal production as one of the priority directions.

The State Programme of Reliable Providing the Population with Foodstuffs 2008-2015 informed that at present there are 45 meat-processing and 128 small milk-processing enterprises in the country.

“As the country faces a lack of milk-processing enterprises, every year at least 150,000 tons of milk become useless. The industrial processing of only 43.5% of the produced milk leads to the fact the most part of population’s needs in butter, sour cream, curds and cheese is covered by import. In this connection the Government supports private sector suggestions on construction of cold stores for raw stuff keeping and creation of new milk- and meat-processing enterprises,” the Programme indicates.

At the same time 14% or 23,000 tons of meat are sold without industrial processing.