Angola seeks agro-industrial cooperation with UAE

Angola is willing to cooperate with the United Arab Emirates in the development of agro-industrial projects

This was said Tuesday in Luanda by the minister of Industry and Commerce, Victor Fernandes, during a meeting with the Sheik Ahmed Al Maktooum, meant to review the UAE’s investment plans for Angola.

On the occasion the parties discussed the avenues towards strengthening the relations, and the need to boost industrial production in Angola and increase UAE’s food production as a country situated in the desert.

The parties also set as priority the sectors of food production, technologies and equipment manufacture.

During the meeting, the two sides decided that a technical teams of the Ministry of Industry and Commerce of Angola and UAE should work together to develop priority projects that have been identified.

On Monday, Sheik Ahmed Al Maktooum signed with Banco de Desenvolvimento de Angola a cooperation agreement to facilitate the purchase of tractors assembled in the Luanda-Bengo Special Economic Zone.

The memo makes provisions for BDA to fund the purchase by Angolan farmers of tractors manufactured in the Luanda-Bengo ZEE by the UAE.

The investment on the Luanda-Bengo ZEE tractors assembly plant with a capacity to produce 3,000 machines a year, is designed to boost the country’s ongoing economy diversification process.

With this memo, Angola and UAE bring into effect a 16-year old partnership set up in 2004, when the Arab nation opened in Luanda a general consulate that became an embassy four years later.

The two countries enjoy an active economic cooperation that reached Usd 1.9 million worth of exports and imports in June this year alone.

Trade between both countries since 2004 involves an assortment of materials and raw materials like ornamental rocks, diamonds, oil and other minerals.

Diamonds account for 90 percent of the Angolan goods exported to the UAE.

Other areas of cooperation between the two countries include oil, gas, trade and investment, energy, defence, transports, mining, agriculture, fisheries, banking, telecommunications, finance and others.