Jeddah-based Islamic Development Bank is tapping Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund as well as other government and private entities as the bank seeks to double financing for agriculture sector in developing countries.
A delegation of top Kenana Sugar officials is in Doha to hold talks with Qatar’s Hassad group to create one of the world’s biggest food producing companies with a view to ensuring food security in the Arab world.
A top-level Qatar National Food Security Programme (QNFSP) delegation, led by QNFSP chairman Fahd al Attiyah, will visit agricultural research institutes and meet senior US Government officials, including from the White House, the State Department, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Energy during its week-long US programme.
Both private and public sector investors from countries such as Qatar, Libya, Jordan, the UAE and Saudi Arabia in the Arab world as well as China and Korea elsewhere now hold long term rights to a total of two million feddans of arable land in Sudan, according to figures from the country’s agriculture ministry.
“We are in big trouble with the government of Madagascar,” said Shin Dong-hyun, the general manager of planning and finance at Daewoo Logistics Corporation.
Qatar is one of the leading investors in the agricultural sector in Sudan, says a former minister of irrigation of Egypt.
Hassad Food has launched a large project for producing livestock in Australia with a capacity of up to 70,000 Syrian head of sheep in its first year, and then up to 150,000 head of sheep in three years. The company will also purchase farmlands for the production of grains especially wheat.
"Hassad [Food] has innovated by considering investments in overseas agribusinesses rather than only purchasing land in countries with questionable property rights, and where the indigenous population may not benefit from such purchases," writes the US embassy in Doha
Qatar has embarked on a food-security programme to make it more self-sufficient and help the communities around its farmland projects in developing countries.
Hassad Food plans to invest all over the world. “Latin America, Asia, you name it,” says Al Hajri, “Where we invest, we make profit. If Qatar is in need of that production, Hassad has the pleasure to sell to Qatar at no special rate.”
"I think it is not right to sell or give your land to foreigners... until you have exhausted every local possibility," said Osama Daoud, chief executive of the Sudanese DAL group which runs large agricultural projects.
Inversores árabes y asiáticos buscan tomar el control de amplias extensiones de tierras fértiles en Sudán, el país más grande de África, que quiere convertirse en el granero de Oriente Medio, aunque para ello deberá modernizar primero su agricultura.
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