Angola government to finance 500 tractors for farmers, says President Joao Lourenco

Angolan President Joao Lourenco at the National Assembly has announced that the government has planned to pay the first 500 tractors from the new assembly industry, opened on 14 October this year, in Viana (Luanda), according to a news report by Angola Press.

Lourenco delivered his speech on the State of the Nation at the National Assembly. He said that the tractors will be provided to peasant families throughout the national territory.

More than 90 percent of the country's agricultural production is performed by this class (peasants), who mostly still use hoes and machetes.

The President of the Republic inaugurated Wednesday a factory for the assembly of agricultural tractors installed in the Special Economic Zone (ZEE), in the municipality of Viana, in Luanda.

The industry has the capacity to produce three thousand units per year. It is a tractor assembly unit resulting from an agreement between Angola and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), an investment of USD 65 million.

The factory unit, the first of its kind in the country, started assembling tractors in the first half of the current year, with more than 80 percent of its workforce being Angolans.

The plant was implemented in partnership with the Agency for Private Investment and Export Promotion (AIPEX) and the Ministries of Industry and Commerce and the Economy and Planning and the collaboration of the multinational Massey Ferguson, specialized in the manufacture of agricultural tractors.