Wednesday, Mar 04, 2009

(This item was originally published Tuesday.)

CAIRO (Dow Jones)-Egypt is looking to raise 66 billion Egyptian pounds ($11.7 billion) worth of investments for its agro-industrial zones project until 2020, the head of the country's Industrial Development Authority, or IDA, told Dow Jones Newswires in an interview Tuesday.

"We are talking about EGP66 billion worth of investments until 2020 to set up 470 factories," Amr Assal said.

Projects eligible for the zones will span a variety of agricultural industries including rice, wheat, dried and frozen vegetables, edible oils, poultry and juices.

The agro-industrial zones will potentially span an area of 1.3 million feddans (0.54 million hectares) across the country once completed and will be developed as part of the public private partnership program.

Products from the zone will be for both local consumption and for export.

The IDA will hold a workshop in April with various interested investors to share the findings of its project study, according to Assal.

"So far we've had around 30 interested Egyptian investors and other investors from Saudi Arabia who are also keen to take part," Assal said.

"But you can only measure the real interest in the project once the workshop is held and word spreads," he said.

Two to three months after the workshop, a tender will be held to sell plots for projects within the agro-industrial zones.

A total of 220,000 feddans will be tendered in Kom Ombo in the Upper Egyptian governorate of Aswan and another 100,000 feddans in Wadi El Natroun in the Beheira governorate will be offered to investors as pilots.

"Kom Ombo is the biggest plot of land allocated by the ministry of agriculture and also because of its location in Upper Egypt and the importance of development in that area, we decided to start with it," Assal said.

Other locations to be offered later are scattered around the Sinai, Menya, and Assiout governorates including some plots in Toshka, Egypt's mega desert reclamation project in Upper Egypt.

-By Maha El Dahan, contributing to Dow Jones Newswires, +20122267850, mahaeldahan@yahoo.com

Copyright (c) 2009 Dow Jones & Co.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

04-03-09 0419GMT