Brasília - The Brazilian Minister of Agrarian Development, Miguel Rossetto, said, yesterday (6), that, through September, the government's National Agrarian Reform Plan has settled 56 thousand families on a total of more than a million hectares of expropriated land. 13 thousand of these families are in the process of regularizing their lots. The others already have legitimate deeds. From the Minister's perspective, these figures are encouraging.

The goal of the Plan is to settle 115 thousand families by the end of this year. "A huge effort is being made to guarantee the settlement of these families, as well as to extend technical assistance to all the settlements, and the government proved it has the operational capacity to fulfill the National Agrarian Reform Plan's goal," the Minister affirmed.

Following a meeting in the Planalto Palace with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the Minister said that Lula reaffirmed the government's commitment to ensure all the budgetary and financial resources earmarked for agrarian reform. So far the Ministry has received US$ 222 million (R$ 630 million) of the US$ 600 million (R$ 1.7 billion) apportioned by the federal government to enable the settlement goal.to be met.

Agência Brasil
Reporter: Paula Medeiros
Translator: David Silberstein
10/07/2004