Maravi

Rural farmers are more vulnerable, says Chituwo

COMMENT - We really need to get a new crop of leaders in there, ones who are not beholden to the neoliberal theories of how economies work. Yes, the minister identified an opportunity correctly, but then he descends in the 'let's attract foreign marketing plants' because 'the government should not be in business'. How about building up the national private sector, Minister? Just standing back and hoping the market will provide.

Rural farmers are more vulnerable, says Chituwo
Written by Christopher Miti in Chipata
Monday, April 27, 2009 2:53:48 PM

AGRICULTURE minister Dr Brian Chituwo has said rural farmers are poor and more vulnerable because of the non-availability of markets for their crops.
And Dr Chituwo has urged Zambians to come up with tobacco manufacturing plants.

In an interview during his tour of Eastern Province last Friday, Chituwo said many of the rural farmers were able to grow crops and needed to be assisted in finding markets.

“Many of our rural folk are able to produce the groundnuts, maize; they have livestock but without markets, they remain vulnerable and poor and the cry has been ‘can we be assisted to market our commodities’. You know under the FRA [Food Reserve Agency] Act, FRA is mandated to market the crop but they are not able really to reach the remotest parts of our country everywhere,” Dr Chituwo said.

“And in order to bring on board the private sector, this is an organisation which has planned that they will go out in the rural areas to set up warehouses, manage them and provide in a transparent manner the marketing for the farmers produce, they store, fumigate if it is green and look for market for those commodities but most importantly they will also provide insurance.”

He said he would introduce an Agriculture Credit Amendment Bill to Parliament, which would incorporate warehouse receipts in order to encourage farmers to realise that farming was a business.

And Dr Chituwo appealed to the private sector to set up tobacco processing plants in the country.

He said the environment was ripe for the private sector to thrive with the establishment of the tobacco processing plants.

“We as a government would like to appeal to the private sector that what has happened this season should be a wakeup call to them. Why shouldn’t we produce the finished products? So the environment is ripe, we can only attract the private sector to set up a manufacturing plant in Zambia...they will be most welcome and they will be guaranteed because after all, Zambia is one of the countries which has a more liberal foreign exchange programme, there are no restrictions, there are no controls. You can bring in your money; you can take out your money when you want to, so what more an attractive environment can there be? We hope this episode will now attract the business men and women to set up processing plants not only for tobacco; we are asking for manufacturers to set up factories to add value to copper products for instance and other products,” Dr Chituwo said.

He said the move taken by the Malawian government to prioritise that country’s tobacco in the processing plants was being addressed at the highest level between the two heads of state.

Asked on how the government was assisting the private tobacco farmers that had nowhere to sell their tobacco after out grower companies decided to buy only pre-financed crop from their farmers, Dr Chituwo said the tobacco industry was private sector driven and that the government could only set the environment for the private sector to flourish.

“We cannot get directly into the selling and buying of tobacco; that is not in the policy and in any case as you very well know, it is a well known fact now that government is not the best to do business because the players in government would say after all nivaboma [it’s for the government] and we really did not get things right, so government’s role is to create this environment, get the private sector flourish and our benefit as government and as citizens is to get the revenue from there so that we are able to provide the services,” said Dr Chituwo.

Labels: BRIAN CHITUWO, MARKETS, NEOLIBERALISM

posted by MrK @ 1:55 PM