‘Floor price only to benefit millers, briefcase traders’

‘Floor price only to benefit millers, briefcase traders’
Written by Chiwoyu Sinyangwe in Lusaka and Christopher Miti in Chipata
Friday, June 19, 2009 2:49:02 PM

GOVERNMENT'S decision to stick to the rejected FRA maize floor price will only benefit millers and briefcase traders at the expense of farmers and mealie-meal consumers, Zambia National Farmers Union (ZNFU) president Jervis Zimba said yesterday.

And ZNFU has accused agriculture minister Dr Brian Chituwo of having manipulated minutes for a consultative meeting held to discuss the rejected floor price of maize, saying this resulted in the entire government being misled.

Meanwhile, former Chipangali UNIP member of parliament Lucas Phiri has said it is unwise for the government to instruct the Food Reserve Agency (FRA) to purchase two million bags of maize throughout the country instead of buying more maize.

Addressing the press yesterday at ZNFU headquarters, the farmers’ supreme body maintained its rejection of the FRA floor price of K65, 000 per 50 kilogrammes of maize.

Zimba said although the FRA price was not the ultimate price of maize, it was a lead indicator and determinant of the ultimate market cost.

Zimba, who described the current maize marketing season as a sham, said there was little likelihood that the price of maize was going to improve due to the current high maize supply on the market.

“Because FRA is selling at K65, 000 and there is a lot of maize on the market, what is happening is a disaster because now farmers in their desperation are selling maize at levels of as low as K40, 000 [per K50 kilogramme]. And these farmers are coming from faraway places like Choma and Kaoma areas,” Zimba said.

“And there is a lot of maize on the market, the millers and the grain traders are now dictating the price due to lack of demand. And ultimately, the maize buyers will buy at very cheap price but the millers will not reduce the price for mealie-meal, so, the people who are going to lose out are the [mealie-meal] consumers and the farmers. “We wonder who the ministry of agriculture wants to please.”

And ZNFU regretted that its consultation with the government over the floor price of maize had yielded no positive results.

In a statement, ZNFU executive director Ndambo Ndambo charged that the ministry of agriculture and FRA had misled the government because they had not considered serious implications of the current floor price on the future of agriculture and maize production.

“The ZNFU received a letter from Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives recently advising that the floor price issue was closed,” stated Ndambo. “Also enclosed were a set of “cooked minutes” which record of the meeting did not reflect entirely what was discussed during the meeting. We are dismayed that the government has unilaterally decided to stick to the announced floor price making the consultation process a one sided show and baseless.”

ZNFU also demanded that the government immediately instructs the Office of the Auditor General to conduct an audit of all millers who benefited from the maize subsidy programme to ascertain how the benefit of the subsidy was passed onto consumers.

And in an interview, Phiri said the government should buy 36 million bags of maize to overcome hunger in the country.

He said the government’s move to buy only two million bags through FRA was a manifestation that government was not serious in reducing poverty levels.

“They have instructed multi-purpose co-operatives societies which are buying maize on behalf of FRA to buy about 4,260 bags per buying point for example Mgubudu society they have been buying 89,000 bags of maize or 120,000 bags of maize per season, so you instruct such a society to buy 4,260 bags by 50 kg, what is that? That is nonsense and we donít understand where we are going and what the government is intending to do and in fact I want to challenge government that this is not the way they can say we want farmers to keep a lot of maize. No. farmers cannot keep a lot of maize because FRA has failed to buy,” Phiri said.

He said the limitation in the number of bags to be bought by FRA would lead to an increase in the number of briefcase buyers exploiting farmers.

Phiri said it would be unfortunate for the government to buy maize from other countries at a later stage when it had failed to buy maize from the local farmers.

And farmers in Chipata Central Agricultural Block have expressed disappointment over the failure by the government to offer them a maize buying depot despite them having a lot of maize to sell.

This is contained in a statement addressed to Eastern Province FRA coordinator, provincial permanent secretary and Provincial Agricultural coordinator and signed by block chairperson David Kumalinga and secretary, Joana Mwenda.

The farmers are requesting the government to provide them with a market at Madzimoyo or Kanyanja centre.