Riyadh, Aug 23 - Saudi Arabia plans to set up a firm to invest in agriculture overseas within two months to ensure food security, the kingdom's agricultural minister said in remarks published on Saturday.
The new company, a partnership between the public sector and domestic private companies, is a part of a programme to ensure adequate food supplies to the Gulf Arab country at cheaper prices, daily newspaper Asharq al-Awsat quoted Agriculture Minister Fahd Balghunaim as saying.
The firm will focus on items that either cannot be grown in the kingdom such as rice and sugar or need plenty of water supplies such as wheat, barley and animal fodder, the minister said.
Saudi Arabia said in January it would start reducing purchases of wheat from local farmers by 12.5 percent per year from this year, abandoning a 30-year programme to grow wheat that achieved self-sufficiency but depleted the desert kingdom's scarce water supplies.
Riyadh's plan was to start importing wheat in the spring of 2009 and move to 100 percent reliance on foreign purchases by 2015.
The government said in May it would swiftly provide land for stockpiling basic staples and would increase global investments to ensure its long-term food security.
The surge in inflation is stirring popular discontent at a time when the world's top oil exporter is basking in windfall revenues from high oil prices.