DUSHANBE, June 12, Asia-Plus  -- Twenty-two commodity producers in Tajikistan, which are members of the Association GS-1 Tajikistan, have got their own barcodes, Amon Ilyayev, the head of the Association GS-1 Tajikistan, said in an interview with Asia-Plus. 

According to him, the Association members are mainly food producers.  “The only member of the Association that is not engaged in food production is Pack-Trading, which deals with production of towels, toilet paper and other similar goods,” Ilyayev.  

Among the barcode holders are joint venture European-Tobacco, Dushanbe dairy plant, bread-baking company Makoli, limited liability companies Eskimo-Master and Elite-Istaravshan as well as closed joint-stock company (OJSC) Sitoari Tilloi, joint venture Obi Zulol, etc.  

Ilyayev said that the project for introduction of a bar coding system in Tajikistan had been launched in Tajikistan under support of the Eurasia Foundation of Central Asia and with technical assistance from Tajik Consumers’ Union. 

The Association GS-1 Tajikistan was established at Tajikistan’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCI) as part of this project.  In August 20007, the Tajik association joined the International Association GS1with similar associations of Pakistan, Nigeria and Benin.  Prefix of GS1 Tajikistan barcode given by the International Association GS1 is “488”. 

A barcode (also bar code) is a machine-readable representation of information (usually dark ink on a light background to create high and low reflectance which is converted to 1s and 0s). Originally, barcodes stored data in the widths and spacings of printed parallel lines, but today they also come in patterns of dots, concentric circles, and text codes hidden within images. Barcodes can be read by optical scanners called barcode readers or scanned from an image by special software. Barcodes are widely used to implement Auto ID capture (AIDC) systems that improve the speed and accuracy of computer data entry. 

In point-of-sale management, the use of barcodes can provide very detailed up-to-date information on key aspects of the business, enabling decisions to be made much more quickly and with more confidence.

GS1 is a leading global organization dedicated to the design and implementation of global standards and solutions to improve the efficiency and visibility of supply and demand chains globally and across sectors. The GS1 system of standards is the most widely used supply chain standards system in the world.