SHARQIYA, Egypt, Dec. 22 (Xinhua) -- Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi inaugurated on Saturday a major greenhouse project in 10th of Ramadan city of Sharqiya Province, north of Cairo.
The state project is under implementation by the National Company for Protective Cultivations and the National Service Projects Organization of the Egyptian military in cooperation with Chinese and Spanish firms.
The project consists of 7,100 agricultural greenhouses over 34,000 feddans (14,280 hectares) of land, according to official Ahram Online news website.
Sisi said that the project started two years ago, adding it was considered the second biggest agricultural greenhouse project in the world.
He stressed that the biggest dates farm in the world at present was also being built in Egypt, with 2,500,000 palm trees on 40,000 feddans producing the finest types of dates.
The greenhouses project aims to fill the gap between agricultural organic production and consumption and to increase the agricultural production of land while saving water.
According to the CEO of the National Company for Protective Cultivations Mohamed Abdel-Hai, the project will provide at least 75,000 job opportunities, while it rationalizes the use of irrigation water by about 80 percent and increases production fourfold.
He stated that the company currently sets up 7,100 greenhouses, adding that this phase is set to produce about 1.5 million tonnes of vegetables per year.
Li Xiaohong, vice president of China Sinomach Heavy Industry Corporation, said his company is responsible for providing steel, membrane and technical support for the construction of greenhouses.
"The location of the project is not far from the Nile River, and the sandy soil texture and temperature are more suitable for greenhouse cultivation techniques," he told Xinhua.
After the completion of the project, the production of vegetables in Egypt will be greatly increased, and the price of vegetables in Egypt can be stabilized, he said.
"The project also requires a large amount of manpower to be hired, which will help solve employment issue in Egypt," he added.
