May 22, 2008, 14:35 GMT
Bethlehem, West Bank - The second day of the Palestine Investment Conference held Thursday in the West Bank city of Bethlehem witnessed the signing of several agreements and announcement of new ventures.
A group of Palestinian and Arab entrepreneurs announced the establishment of a new 100-million dollar capital holding company, Watan, to focus on building three different factories for cement, steel and bricks, according to Michael Sayegh, a Jordanian entrepreneur, one of the founders and main shareholders.
He said the new holding company, with 15 shareholders mainly Jordanian and Palestinian, will start in a few months a process to establish an affiliate public shareholding industrial company to build the three factories.
The cement factory alone will cost about 380 million dollars.
The Palestinian areas, he said, where construction is a major component of the economy, imports all these vital construction material from the Israeli market stressing the need for the Palestinian areas to produce its own material.
Another joint project worth 12 million dollars will witness the construction of a farm for hatching and breeding turkeys and a slaughterhouse in the Jordan Valley area to supply the Palestinian areas with their supply of turkey meat, currently imported from Israel at the rate of 50 tons a day.
Palestinians expect agreements signed on the sidelines of the investment conference may reach the one billion dollar mark.
The second day of the investment conference started with speeches from Palestinian and world officials.
Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad welcoming the over 1,000 Arab and international guests to the conference stressing that 'the fact that we were able to hold this conference is itself a success story of Palestinian will.'
He said 'it is time for the Palestinian people to be free and to build their own independent state.' He stressed that 'the Palestinian economic vision is to have a free market economy, competitive, growing and diversified and led by the private sector.'
Fayyad told his guests that 'your investment in Palestine is an investment in peace.'
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