13 07 13 Bloomberg – Congo Seeks to Lure Investors for $5.7 Billion Farming Plan (1)

    
The government has already obtained 15 percent of the funds
required for the
program that targets 6 percent annual growth in
the industry, Agriculture
Minister Jean-Chrysostome Vahamwiti
told reporters today in the capital,
Kinshasa. The government
will hold a conference in September to help attract
more
investment, he said.
     “We don’t want loans, we want private
investment, people
who bring their own capital to invest in this
country,”
Vahamwiti said. Legislation requiring that Congolese citizens
or
companies own more than 50 percent of agricultural projects is
being
revised as part of a process of “reassuring eventual
investors,” he
said.
     Economic growth in Congo, the world’s eighth-largest
copper
producer, is forecast to accelerate to 8.2 percent this year
from
7.2 percent last year, according to the government.
Agriculture makes up
about 22 percent of the country’s $15.6
billion economy, African Development
Bank and World Bank data
show.
     While most of the country’s recent
economic growth has come
from higher mineral prices, agriculture will be “the
permanent
successor to mining, which is, unfortunately,
unsustainable,”
Vahamwiti said.

                         Reducing
Hunger

     Congo was tied for last in this year’s United
Nations
Development Programme Human Development Index, which
measures
economic and social indicators such as education, health
and
income. The government expects investment in agriculture to cut
hunger
in half by 2018, Vahamwiti said.
     Currently the country, the biggest in
sub-Saharan Africa,
uses only about 10 percent of its more than 80 million
hectares
(198 million acres) of arable land, according to the Food
and
Agriculture Organization.
     “We have much more land than Congolese
can develop
alone,” said Elvis Mutiri wa Bashara, a member of
parliament
from the fertile North Kivu province who has
proposed
eliminating the shareholding provision from the 2011
agriculture
law.
     The 50 percent rule has halted most new investment
in the
industry, Mutiri said in an interview in Kinshasa today.
“Investors
are all saying they’re waiting for the law
to
change.”

                            20% Share

    
Parliament will consider Mutiri’s amendments along with a
new proposal by the
government reducing the required domestic
shareholding to at least 20 percent
as early as September,
Vahamwiti said.
     “Even 20 percent is not a
solution,” Mutiri said. “We
shouldn’t limit the shareholding in the law. Let
the game play
out.”
     Vahamwiti reassured current investors like
Toronto-based
palm-oil producer Feronia Inc., which expressed
uncertainty
about whether or not the shareholding rules would apply to
them
in a July 3 statement on the company’s website. Any new
ownership
regulations “will not be retro-active,” he said.
“Investors need
guarantees.”

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