KUWAIT: The Al-Badel International Development Company of Kuwait plans to launch a $1.5 billion gigantic project to grow sugar cane in Massingir district, in the southern province of Gaza within the next three months, APA learnt here the other day.
The visiting chairperson of Al-Badel, Ali Mahmoud made the announcement after a meeting late on Wednesday with Mozambican Prime Minister Carlos Agostinho do Rosario with whom he discussed opportunities for further development projects in agriculture and industry.
The sugar cane grown in Massingir is intended essentially for the production of bio-ethanol, a supposedly clean source of energy.
The Al-Badel sugar project is not the first time investors have planned to produce bio-ethanol in Massingir.
A contract was signed in 2007 with the company Procana to produce ethanol from a 30,000 hectare sugar plantation in Massingir.
Procana, a London-based Central Mining and Exploration Company, (CAMEC), had promised to invest $510 million in Massingir, but Mozambique saw almost none of this investment: two years after the contract was signed, all Procana had done was clear 800 hectares of land.
The government then cancelled the contract and began looking for other investors for Massingir.
According to Mahmoud, Al-Badel intends to invest $26 billion in Mozambique and half of this amount $13 billion, is earmarked for an industrial unit in the western province of Tete that will convert coal residues into diesel.
