Non-ferrous metallurgy and machine building

The machine-building complex makes machines and equipment for all spheres of the economy and goods such as refrigerators and TV sets for people. It is a priority complex because no branch can develop without machines. A machine consists of thousands of parts, so specialization in making parts and cooperation between enterprises are widespread; this needs good transport routes. In siting machine-building plants, transport arteries, skilled workers and scientific-technical specialists, closeness to consumers and the metallurgy base are considered. The price of a machine can be hundreds of times the price of the metal in it, because complex machine tools and highly skilled labour are required. In Uzbekistan, to meet the needs of agriculture, agricultural machine building first appeared (cotton pickers, seed drills, cultivators), as well as irrigation machinery (Andijan), tractors and cotton-ginning equipment (Tashkent, Chirchiq, Samarkand). Later came electrical engineering, radio-electronics, chemical and textile machine building, oil and gas equipment (Namangan) and lifts (Samarkand). Today only about half of machine building serves the agro-industrial complex.