Foreign companies and citizens buy 1,200 hectares of land every day in Brazil, an area six times the size of the Principality of Monaco, local daily Folha de Sao Paulo said on Monday.
Statistics show foreign investors bought at least 1,523 rural properties or 2,269,200 hectares of land in the country from November 2007 to May 2008.
The above figures do not include land bought by Brazilian companies with foreign capital or individuals who use Brazilian citizens as front men.
Most buyers are said to buy land for the production of soybeans, ethanol, cattle-raising and crops to produce biofuel.
A study by Brazil's National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA) said foreign entities owned 5.5 million hectares of Brazilian land. Of that amount, 754,700 hectares are in Mato Grosso state and 504,700 hectares are in Sao Paulo state.
The acquisition of land by foreigners, especially in the Amazon Rainforest area, is a growing source of worry for the Brazilian authorities.
In 2006, Swedish businessman Johan Eliasch purchased 160,000 hectares of land in the heart of the Amazon rain forest, which is even bigger than the country's largest city Sao Paulo.
Even though Eliasch declared he bought the land because he liked the forest and wanted to preserve it, last month his logging company was fined 450 million reais (281.25 million U.S. dollars) for illegal exploitation. INCRA is considering annulling the registry of Eliasch's ownership of the land.
Brazilian government plans to take legal measures to limit the purchase of land by foreigners. Land acquisition is now only allowed for residents and companies operating in the country.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-07/08/content_8510503.htm
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