Hungarian Minister of State for Public Administration Géza Poprády met with Qatar's Minister for the Environment Ahmad Ibn Amir Muhammad al-Humaidi on 24 March to discuss opportunities for cooperation between the two countries.

Mr. Poprády is the first high-level Hungarian politician to have visited the State of Qatar, where he held negotiations with the head of the country's Ministry of Environment, which is also responsible for agriculture and food supply. The primary goal of the visit was to discuss possible Hungarian involvement in Qatar's national Food Security Programme. Minister of State Poprády stressed that one of Hungary's priority goals is to cooperate with the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to contribute to the security of their food supply. Our primary long-term goal is to enable the injection of Arab capital to both facilitate the development of Hungarian agriculture and food industry enterprises and to increase the food security of the GCC countries by exporting part of the good produced. Mr. Poprády undertook to provide a report summarising Hungary's agriculture and food industry and invited representatives from the Ministry, the Food Security Programme supervised by the Ministry and from the enterprises involved to visit Hungary.

Recalling the meeting between Mr. al-Humaidi and Hungarian Minister of State for Environmental Affairs Zoltán Illés last autumn, Mr. Poprády offered to pass on Hungarian experience within the fields of environmental legislation and regulation.

Mr. al-Humaidi welcomed the Hungarian offer and is awaiting a concrete proposal form the Hungarian party, which he hope will soon lead to the beginning of cooperation in all areas.

(Press Office of the Ministry of Rural Development)