Deals between farmers, UAE investors blocked

[LRE]

Thursday, 23 Apr, 2009 | 09:33 AM PST |


Federal Minister for Investment Waqar Ahmed Khan recently said that Pakistan was offering one million acres of farmland for sale or long-term investment and that the land that would be sold or leased was unused. - APP photo

DUBAI: Concern about farmers’ rights has led the government of Balochistan to block direct deals between UAE-based private investors and farmers, a top official said on Wednesday.

Over the past six months a number of UAE investors had approached Baloch farmers to buy land, Balochistan Chief Secretary Nasir Khosa told Reuters.

‘We are seeing more and more UAE investors coming to this region looking to buy farms directly from the local farmers which is not legal because it has to be approved by a government body,’ Khosa said.

Last year, Al Qudra, a private Abu Dhabi-based investment firm, said it had plans to start agriculture projects in Pakistan.

‘We stopped these deals because they had compromised the rights of the farmers in terms of how much of the produce they would keep,’ said Khosa.

‘It’s been about three months since we sent these regulations and so far we have not heard anything from these companies,’ he said. ‘I think that they are no longer interested.’

On Monday, federal Minister for Investment Waqar Ahmed Khan said that Pakistan was offering one million acres of farmland for sale or long-term investment. He said that a lot of the land would be in Makran, in southern Balochistan. Asked how farmers’ rights would be preserved, Khan said the land that would be sold or leased was unused.

Separately, a food security expert from the United Nations said on Wednesday that the world body was concerned that farmers’ rights in developing nations could be compromised as rich countries planned to buy farmland to secure food supplies.—Reuters