The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs plans to invest 84 billion won ($76.6 million) in a “MAFRA Fund of Funds” this year to foster the nation’s food and farm industries, officials said Monday.

The ministry said that it would use 50 billion won from state funds and collect the remainder from the private sector. It plans to invest the money in investors’ cooperatives or private equity funds.

Ministry officials said the corpus would be invested in six funds, yet to be created within the year. They include two agricultural and food funds for 22 billion won each, an agricultural and farming export fund for 10 billion won and a special agricultural venture fund for 10 billion won.

“The special fund will be created later in the second half, after we assess and analyze of the yields from the first half,” the ministry said.

The ministry has run the MAFRA Fund of Funds since 2010, raising a total of 467 billion won. About 190.8 billion won of this fund, 94.2 billion won of which comes from the private sector, were injected into the agricultural and food investment cooperatives.

The ministry also plans to invigorate the investment market for the agricultural sector by lowering the legal bars for prospective investment cooperatives.

“The agricultural and food funds are growing to replace the traditional measures of agricultural subsidies,” the ministry said. “It is our goal to attract funds jointly from the private and government sector in the beginning, and eventually let the private sector take over.”

By Chung Joo-won (joowonc@heraldcorp.com)