Balochistan govt blocks agricultural land purchases by UAE investors

[Naveed Yaseen]

DUBAI (April 23 2009): Concern about farmers rights has led the government of Balochistan to block direct deals between UAE-based private investors and farmers, a top Baloch official told Reuters on Wednesday. Over the past six months a number of UAE investors had approached Baloch farmers to buy land, said Nasir Khosa, general chief-secretary of the provincial government.

"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. He declined to name the companies. Last year Al Qudra, the 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," Khosa said. "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."

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