President wants more investmentSaleh gives a boost to agriculture sector [Archives:2004/787/Business & Economy]

Mahyoub Al-Kamaly
President Ali Abdullah Saleh is angry about Yemeni investors who don't invest their money in the domestic sectors (in order not to pay alms tax and other taxes), while also exploiting licenses to build mosques, so they can import construction materials for other construction.
The president said that merchants and businessmen are smuggling hard currency abroad at a time Yemen is looking for foreign investors.
He wondered about the causes, noting that security is established and the law on investments offers great facilities for investors.
In a festival held by Yemen's Agricultural Cooperative Union to celebrate the 14 October Revolution, the president offered many suggestions including a call for the private sector to build projects related to packing and preservation of agricultural products, as well as tool and implement factories, so these products don't have to be imported.
He gave directives to an agriculture encouragement fund to build a factory for irrigation equipment, and contributed $2 million toward an investment partnership.
Minister of Agriculture Omer Hassan Suweid said Yemen is seeking to build more water dams and barratries to encounter waters crisis and to take care of agricultural production where there is a 65% of the work force working in it, noting that projects for development of irrigation have started in the governorates of Lahj and Abyan.
The Yemeni president also inaugurated a project of distributing irrigation networks covering 3,000 hectares and also another 5,750 hectares in more than 17 governorates being covered during the past two years.
This, in addition to distribution of 80,000 irrigation pipes covering 20,000 feddan in Tihama, Abyan and Lahj on cotton farmers. Some 1,060 plough machines are also going to farmers.
In addition, the agricultural cooperative union, during the last period, implemented a large number of water dams and water installations at a cost of YR 2.4 billion in nine governorates and finished irrigation installations covering an area of 7,884 hectares at a cost of more than a YR 1 billion.
Chairman of the agricultural cooperative union Mohammed Basheer says the union has contributed also to implementing 12 projects for marketing and exporting costing more than one billion riyals and currently there are six projects under construction at a cost of YR 529 million.
The government pins some hope on the agricultural sector to help a qualitative transfer in production and increase national exports.
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