Luanda – The plan for development of wheat, rice, soya and maize – “Planagrão”, plans to produce, as of 2027, 6 million tons of grains per year, the Secretary of State for the Economy, Ivan dos Santos said Tuesday.
At a time when the country produces around 3.14 million tons of grain per year, the government’s strategic plan, Planagrão, which is due to start operating in the first quarter of next year in the east of the country, aims to harvest over 6 million tons of grain per year.
This activity, initially will be carried out in the four eastern provinces of the country, namely Moxico, Lunda Norte, Lunda Sul and Cuando Cubango, across an area of two million hectares, at an estimated overall cost of 1.6 billion kwanzas.
To that purpose, the Angolan government, via the Angolan Development Bank (BDA) and the Angolan Risk Capital Active Fund (Facra), will provide funding to private, national and foreign producers in the next five-year period 2023/2027.
In this regard, the secretary of state said that as of the first quarter of 2023 interested grain farmers could submit their projects to the BDA and Facra, via the Planagrão technical office.
At first, he explained, the processes will go through the Planagrão technical unit, which will assess the conformity of the project and then forward it to the bank.
The plan, based on ten structuring axes, provides that interested parties submit their proposals without limits on projects or the amount of credit, which is defined by the size of the project in question.
Of the total amount of funding (1.6 billion kwanzas), around 1.5 million kwanzas will be provided by the BDA and the remainder by FACRA.
According to dos Santos, Planagrão will cover 2 million hectares in the four provinces and as it is extended to other parts of the country it will increase proportionally.
According to dos Santos, the aims of Planagrão are to boost production of wheat, rice, soya and maize on a large scale, improve productivity and profitability of soils, increase agricultural businesses and employment, promote the value chain and guarantee producers a fixed income.
The objectives also include building the scientific capacity of agronomists, producing grains and fertilizers, contributing to the diversification of exports, increasing Angola’s resilience to external shocks, as well as the country’s food self-sufficiency.
Infrastructure of the technical and transport network
About communication ways – roads, the Secretary of State for Economy said that there is a conjugation with the Public Investment Programme (PIP) that will carry out the construction of 13,000 kilometres of roads, only in the corridor of these four Planagrão pilot provinces.
“In each area designated for Planagrão development, the government will link access to the main roads, with a public investment of around 1.1 billion kwanzas,” he said.
In the same way, the PIP will build the infrastructures of the technical network to distribute power and water to each of the Planagrão producers.
Source: Angola Press News Agency