Dubai – After economic embargoes on Sudan put in place by the United States were lifted last year, foreign direct investment flows into the African nation are progressing well, according to Sudan’s Investment minister Mubarak Al Fadil Al Mahdi, who’s in Dubai, UAE for the Annual Investment Meeting, which launched this Monday (9). “Lots of investments are coming in since the sanctions were lifted,” the minister told ANBA.
He discussed a bevy of projects underway in the country, including ones in mining involving companies from Canada, Morocco and Australia. “There is also investment from Turkey in the new Khartoum Airport (in the namesake capital), slated for completion in 30 months at a cost of USD 1.1 billion,” said Mahdi.
The minister said there is Turkish investment in ports as well – specifically in the rebuilding of the “old seaport of Suakin,” a historic Sudanese city, in a drive to make it a tourist spot. “And we are in talks with the UAE to build a gas-fired thermoelectric plant and a gas pipeline liking Port Sudan (in the Red Sea) and Khartoum,” he said.
Mahdi added that United States companies are coming into Sudan’s oil and food industries. “They are opening the first KFC and Pizza Hut in the country. I issued the license last week,” he said.
The minister said that there Brazilian cooperation is currently in place in banana farming – to improve the quality of fruit intended for export – and with Sudan’s Kenana corporation, to make and export ethanol. He added that he wishes to get businesses from Brazil into the local meat industry.
Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum