Yuri Razgulaev: Chinese producers falsify trademarks of Kirghiz factories

According to information of National Statistical Committee of Kirghizia, only two percent of Kirghiz factories belong to the state, two more percent of factories are registered as communal works. The rest plants are private. There are hardly other countries in CIS, where economy is being reorganized as resolutely as in Kirghizia. Though these figures are not the main thing. Recent years are charachterized in Kirghizia with stable growth of gross domestic product, including industry plants. To be just, the biggest part of this growth falls on Kumtorsk gold-mining industrial complex. Though not everything depends on it. The above mentioned private plants have also advanced. For example, Kantsk cement and slate works. Taking into account poor investments in industry, the things must not be good here. Nothing of the kind! The plant functions successfully and has many customers. Another plant - Kirghiz worsted cloth factory – is going out to foreign market. It produces dozens million metres of qualitative wool cloth. Of course, the republic cannot consume so much. Though the factory was built in Soviet times to supply cloth for the whole Soviet Middle Asia. And than everything collapsed. Bulat Akkaziev, the director general of the factory likes to remember about that complicated years when the factory was launching its independent activity. It had no experience, and the conditions were really hard: “Supplies of dyes, reagents were stopped, so we decided to make a resolute step and opened our representative office in Moscow, because Russia had always been our main partner.” Kirghiz stock company “Edelweiss” is rather oriented to the local market. Its production is competitive with imported one. Especially taking into account the prices. In contrast to many other Kirghiz factories, Edelweiss has never discharged its workers over recent years, moreover, it even enlarged their staff one and a half times. At the same time, the volume of output grew almost three times. New technology lines appeared at the factory bought for its own money. There is an interesting thing: in Kirghiz wholesale markets where merchants from many regions of Russia buy their goods, socks with trademark of Edelweiss can be bought, though produced in China. The Chinese decided to use this popular mark, because its presence guarantees profitable realization of the good. Edelweiss’s shares are quoted not lower, than the ones of vodka concern ‘Bakai’. Of course, the way of these leaders of Kirghiz industry is not easy. Though these examples show that economical freedom allows to accelerate development of some plants and even of some industries.

Yuri Razgulaev PRAVDA.Ru Bishkek Kirghizia