Palm | Kelapa Sawit

Source: Reuters

25/09/2009

Dar Es Salaam, Sept 24 - Tanzania is in talks with South Korea over the development of 100,000 hectares of land for food production and processing but has yet to reach a firm deal, an official said on Thursday.

Saidi Nguba, spokesman for Tanzania's prime minister, said the land in question is in the Rufiji Valley in the Coast Region. Half of it will be used by small-scale farmers to grow food while the rest will be for processing plants.

"The Koreans are coming on the technical side of it. That means they want to develop farmers there to own some small pieces, but be very productive," he told Reuters by phone.

"This land is not meant to be leased to the Koreans as such, but a mechanism will be worked out on how the land must be processed."

Nguba said there was no timeframe for the project and the two sides were yet to set up a technical team to study the plan's viability and how to secure the land in question.

Korean news agency Yonhap reported on its website on Thursday that state-run Korea Rural Community Corp (KRC) would develop the land and help local companies boost exports in African and European markets.

Nguba said KRC was one of the institutions that Tanzanian government officials held talks with during Pinda's visit to Korea in early September.

Tanzania has 44 million hectares of arable land, of which the government says about 10.8 million is in use.

Countries in Asia and the Gulf that are mainly reliant on food imports have been increasingly seeking land in the developing world to grow crops for their own populations.

In April, Saudi investors asked the east African economy if they could lease 500,000 hectares of farmland for wheat and rice farming as part of a plan to boost the desert kingdom's food supplies.