COFCO's First Batch of Grain Aids to Africa Departed from Tianjin Port

COFCO is fulfilling its task of emergency grain aids to Africa by sending its first batch from Tianjin Port on September 2, 2011, which will arrive at Ethiopia in mid-October.

This first batch is 1,440 tons of wheat. The second batch will depart from Shanghai Port on next day for Kenya. There will be shipments every week afterwards departing from Shanghai Port and Zhangjiakou Port. All the batches of aids will arrive African countries one after the other by the end of October.

As China's state-owned grain and oil enterprise, COFCO well fulfilled all the foreign aids tasks in history. This time, the aids are produced and supplied by Divisions of Rice, Grain Trading, Wheat Processing, Oilseed Processing, etc. The product quality meets the aids quality standards formulated by the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM).

From last year, the Horn of Africa was stricken by unprecedented drought over recent 60 years. Grain crisis deteriorated for months. Widely spreading famine drew attention of the international community. As the UN Refugee Agency revealed, up to an average of ten children died of hunger every day now in Dollo Ado Refugee Camp, one of the four in Southeast Ethiopia. Out of international humanitarianism, in order to mitigate the grain crisis in East African countries, China announced RMB 353 million of emergency aids in grain and money to these nations.

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