Indonesia will allocate at least 2 million hectares (4.9 million acres) of farm land to joint ventures with Saudi investors to be used mainly for the cultivation of rice, a Saudi newspaper reported on Saturday. The move would turn Indonesia into the worlds top rice exporter in 2009, said Alwi Shihab, the Indonesian presidents special envoy to the Middle East, according newspaper Okaz.
Some provinces in Indonesia have already signed agreements for such joint ventures, Shihab added. Alwi said last year that Saudi BinLadin Group planned to invest at least $4.3 billion in Indonesias rice-farming industry on 500,000 hectares of land in the Papua province.
Saudi Arabia, among the worlds top ten rice importers, said in January that it had received the first batch of rice produced abroad by local investors under a government-sponsored push for agricultural investment outside the kingdom. Under the plan, Saudi Arabia would import a "reasonable amount" of commodities, provide support for those investments and sign bilateral agreements with the relevant governments, the government said.
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