Standards and certification schemes

On January 14, the workshop “Standards and certification schemes” was held in Tokmok city.

An introductory workshop on international standards and certification schemes for food quality and safety, such as ISO 9001, ISO 22000, GLOBAL GAP, Good Aquaculture Practices, EU ORGANIC and FAIRTRADE, was held within the framework of the Value Chain Agro Finance project in Kyrgyzstan.
The workshop aimed to familiarize enterprises’ representatives – members of the Association of Fishery Producers of Kyrgyzstan – with international quality standards, their implementation and to help them select reasonable and appropriate standards. The participants were further provided information about the Project activities, e.g. about the promotion of enterprises’ certification, selection criteria and ways to obtain technical assistance on implementation of food safety and quality standards and certification schemes.

The workshop was held in Tokmok and was attended by representatives of six fisheries of Chui region. It included an in-depth discussion on the implementation of international standards at the stages of incubation, growing and processing of fish, to facilitate further export of fish products.

“At this seminar we received a lot of useful information about food safety standards and their implementation as well as learned more about the proposed certification possibilities of enterprises. It was a good seminar, in the future we plan to use the information received in the development of our business”, said Kalys Zhumabaev, who participated in the seminar and works for “Asia Plus” company.

The Project plans to organize similar seminars for food producers on the certification of enterprises according to international standards in order to increase their export potential in the sector.

Note: The Value Chain Agro Finance Project in Kyrgyzstan was launched on April 25, 2023 and provides support to farmers and value chain actors to introduce new advanced technologies for the production and processing of agricultural products, to introduce international quality standards for products, and to access long-term agricultural investment loans in local currency.

The Project’s budget is EUR 37 million and the Project is co-financed by the European Union (EU), the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the German Development Bank (KfW).

The Value Chain Agro Finance Project is implemented by the German consulting company GOPA AFC (in consortium with the CAIConsulting) with the support and participation of the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Agriculture of the Kyrgyz Republic.