Khartoum-The head of Lebanese farmland investor GLB) Invest revealed on Tuesday that his company plans to invest up to $800 million in Sudan to produce animal feed to be sold to Saudi Arabia.
The head of Beirut-based GLB Invest, Firas Badra, said the firm had leased 78,000 hectares of land 130km north of Khartoum to produce and export 40,000 tonnes annually of animal feed from January to Saudi Arabia.
“We are starting now with 40,000 tonnes for the time being and the project will have a maximum capacity of 750,000 tonnes by 2019,” Badra told Reuters on the sidelines of an Arab food investment conference in the Sudanese capital.
The Sudanese pound has more than halved in value since South Sudan’s secession in 2011 deprived Sudan of most oil production, the main source for dollars and state revenues.
He said the investment climate in Sudan was good despite central bank restrictions on repatriating profits in hard currency, a common complaint from foreign investors.