Uzbekistan, the world’s second biggest cotton exporter, produced 656,074 tonnes of cotton fibre in January-June 2007 compared to 664,715 in the same period of last year, the state statistics committee said on Monday.

During the first half of the year the Central Asian state produced 72,294 tonnes of yarn compared to 66,939 tonnes in the same year-ago period.

Uzbekistan’s 2006 cotton fibre output fell to 1.171 million tonnes from 1.188 million a year earlier.

Earlier the government said it expected to export 750,000-800,000 tonnes of fibre in 2006 compared to 880,000 tonnes in 2005 when cotton made up 19 percent of total export revenues during that year.