"Tanzania welcomes Chinese investment and is expecting more investment in agriculture sector to boost bilateral cooperation and enhance food production," Tanzanian Minister of Agriculture, Food Security and Cooperatives Stephen Masatu Wasira said here on Monday.

Wasira, in an interview with Xinhua on phone, hailed the good cooperation and the smooth implementation of bilateral cooperation projects in agriculture industry.

"During Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to Tanzania in February this year, the Tanzanian government and the Chinese government signed a series of agreements including that on development and cooperation in agriculture sector, " the minister said.

Actually, there are some Chinese agriculture projects in the Eastern African country, including a big farm in Morogoro region in eastern Tanzanian, Wasira noted.

"We would like to invite more Chinese companies to invest on the limited and valuable resources in Tanzania to boost agriculture production and marketing," he asserted.

He also noted that the two sides keep good communication on the development and the implementation of setting up an agricultural technology demonstration center in Tanzania, which was included in the eight-point measures announced in the 2006 Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation.

On Tanzanian's "Agriculture First" national policy, the minister noted that agriculture is of great importance to Tanzania's national economy especially during the current international financial crisis and to the solving of food crisis, as about 80 percent of Tanzania's total 44 million population depends on agriculture and 95 percent of food is produced by agriculture.

"The policy is not a slogan, but it's real, which means to boost grain production," he noted, adding that his country's agriculture is facing the challenge of lack of sufficient rain and China can help Tanzania on the field of irrigation technology.

The minister also noted that there are a few international investments in the agriculture sector in his country, including sugar cane plant projects supported by South Africa and Mauritius, as well as aid from the United States and Britain for rice production in Tanzania.

"There is an old Chinese saying: Give a man a fish is not as good as give him a fishnet, which means he can continue fishing instead of asking for fish," Wasira concluded.

Agriculture programs supported by development partners in Tanzania include rural financial services, livestock programs and agricultural marketing systems development programs supported by the International Fund for Agriculture Development among others.