Premier Khamis underlines importance of improving agricultural sector

Prime Minister Eng. Imad Khamis discussed on Tuesday with members of the Agricultural Engineers Union and members of the Union’s Retirement Treasury headed by Dr. Rama Aziz, Chairman of the Agricultural Engineers Union, ways to enhance their role in improving the agricultural sector, both plant and animal, as a priority in the work of the state and as a major contributor to realizing food security and economic development.

The Premier approved the union’s investment of large areas of arable lands that are not invested in the governorates’ rural areas and to import all the requirements of the agricultural sector.

Laying down a national plan to train new agricultural engineers in the field of agricultural work and the establishment of a central committee for pricing agricultural products in cooperation with the Ministry of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform, the Union of Peasants, and the Union of Agricultural Engineers and the Union of Chambers of Agriculture was also decided.

During the meeting, the union discussed their plan to develop mechanisms of work and ways to enhance the union’s investments so as to grant loans to expand its scope of investment to include agricultural and food industries. Providing the necessary support to rehabilitate the union’s property and the investments affected by the war was also agreed upon.

The participants underlined the necessity of working within the framework of integration and partnership between the Ministry of Agriculture and the Union to invest every arable meter and to coordinate with the General Commission for Scientific Agricultural Research to expand the cultivation of drought-resistant and high-yielding varieties.

Engineer Khamis stressed the need to work with a new and integrated vision between the state institutions and Unions and to lay down an advanced work mechanism and feasible plans on the basis of reality, highlighting the importance of the agricultural sector so as to be the most effective during the current and future phases.

In a statement to reporters, Dr. Aziz clarified that the Union is cooperating with the Ministry of Agriculture in regard to small and family agricultural projects and developing irrigation up to date methods and lands’ reclamation, noting that a special schedule will be laid down for the investment projects of the Union which were damaged by terrorism to provide the necessary government support for rehabilitation. 

The meeting was attended by the Minister of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform Ahmad al-Qadri and the Secretary General of the Cabinet.

Inas Abdulkareem