CAIRO: The General Authority for Industrial Development (GAID) has approved a proposal from investors to create a new beet sugar factory with a capital of $160 million (approximately LE 916 million), said Amr Assal, chairman of GAID. He pointed out that the new joint-stock company will produce sugar and cattle fodder from beet plant. The new company will create 800 new jobs and in a plant to be built in Nobariya, where 800 feddans of arable land produce sugar-beet. The company will also provide farmers with technical and financial support, supplying them with their needs of seeds and fertilizers. Assal said the new company will produce 128,000 tons of crude sugar a year and 125,000 tons of refined sugar in addition to 54,000 tons of cattle fodder. Mokhtar Al-Sherif, professor of economics at Al-Mansoura University, attributed the growing interest among Egyptian and Arab investors in beet sugar production to the incentives provided by the Ministry of Agriculture to close the gap between domestic production and consumption of sugar. Total sugar production in Egypt increased to 1.5 million tons a year in 2005 from 649,000 tons in 1982, but consumption soared to over 2.5 million tons a year. Al-Sherif pointed to the new policy of the Ministry of Agriculture to expand beet growing in the Delta region, aiming to encourage sugar production from beet plant.
