Oromia Land Management Bureau disclosed it will start to accept applications from investors that request to lease land. The Bureau is going to start accepting applications starting from the next month. Oromia State, the biggest of the states in Ethiopia’s federal arrangement, halted giving lands to investors due to underutilized lands granted to investors.

“We have to revise and know the status of the pending requests before providing new land to investors,” said Ibsa Yusuf, Communications Head of the Bureau. “To avoid previous mistakes happening again, we are carefully revising pending proposals.”

According to a study by the Oromia Investment Bureau, half of the lands taken by investors in Oromia State are unutilized. Most of the investors had not started production along the guidelines of the investment bureau, Ibsa noted.

The study by the investment bureau was conducted in 9 cities and 5 zones found in the State.

Accordign to Fortune, in the past 5 years, more than 10,000 iinvestors took land in Oromia. Out of these, it was only 1,920 that invested in rural areas.

Source: Fortune