By William Davison, Bloomberg
Ethiopia has made more than 4 million hectares (9.9
million acres) of “fertile and unutilized” land available for
agriculture companies that meet government requirements, Prime Minister
Meles Zenawi said.
About 300,000 hectares has been leased for commercial
farming so far, he said at an Ethiopian investment forum today in the
capital,
Addis Ababa. “There has been a significant flow into large-scale state- type
commercial farming in our country and we seek even more in the future,”
he said. Investors in Ethiopian land include Bangalore-based Karuturi Global Ltd.
(KARG), the world’s largest rose grower, which is developing 100,000
hectares in Ethiopia’s southwestern Gambella region.
The farm will have
its first harvest in October, Managing Director Sai Ramakrishna Karuturi
told the forum today.Horizon Plantations Ethiopia, which is majority owned by Saudi
billionaire Mohamed al-Amoudi, leased a 20,000-hectare plot in the
western Benishangul-Gumuz region in March to grow groundnuts to produce
cooking oil.
New land will only be allocated to applicants who submit “proper”
business and land-use plans, manage the environment and provide jobs for
local citizens, Meles said.Inadequate applications are “perhaps one of the reasons we’ve not
succeeded in allocating more than 10 percent of land that has been
allocated for investment,” he said. The government has repossessed land
from inactive operators, Meles said.
Meles denied accusations by advocacy groups including the
California-based Oakland Institute that communities in western Ethiopia
are being forcibly evicted to make way for investors. “The bulk of
resettlement is happening on the opposite end of where the private
sector investment in agriculture is happening,” he said.To contact the reporter on this story: William Davison in Addis Ababa via Nairobi at pmrichardson@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Paul Richardson in Nairobi at pmrichardson@bloomberg.net.
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