Qatar's Hassad eyes $625m spend on food supplies

Hassad Food Co, the agricultural investment arm of Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, may invest 500m euros ($625m) this year to increase food supplies for the desert emirate, the company’s chairman said.

“Buying agricultural land isn’t a goal for the company,” Nasser al-Hajri said in an interview in the Qatari capital Doha.

“The goal is to produce and improve the production from different parts of the world.”

Qatar imports 90 percent of its food and established Hassad to secure supplies. The company invested $2bn last year, Hussain al-Abdulla, a board member at the Qatar Investment Authority, the sovereign fund, said in April.

The company announced plans to buy Turkish farmland last year. The state-run Qatar News Agency reported in 2010 that Hassad intended to acquire a Brazilian sugar mill.

Hassad is inviting companies to bid for a QR300m ($82m) project to build three food stores in the country, al-Hajri said.