South Korea’s Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (MAFRA) is investing US$76.6 million into a MAFRA fund of funds to support agricultural and food industries in the country. The ministry announced it will provide the initial W50billion (US$45.5 million), and will solicit the remainder of the total, which it plans to invest in investor’s cooperatives and private equity from the private sector. The entire corpus will be committed across six funds to be created this year including two agricultural and food funds set a W22billion (US$20 million) each, an agricultural and farming export fund set at W10billion (US$9 million), and a special agricultural venture capital fund to be created in the second half of the year set at W10billion (US$9 million). Since 2010 the ministry had run the MAFRA Fund of Funds raising a total of W467billion (US$425 million). Of this total, W190.8billion (US173.8 million) has been injected into agricultural and food investment cooperatives including W94.2billion (US$85.7 million) from the private sector. The ministry has also announced that it will lower the legal requirement for prospective agricultural investment cooperatives, with the goal of having the agriculture and food funds replacing the traditional measure of agricultural subsidies.
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