Ministers says Grain Marketing Board has cleared arrears for maize farmers

HARARE – The Grain Marketing Board (GMB) has paid farmers all outstanding amounts for the maize that they delivered to the parastatal, a Cabinet Minister has said.

Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development Minister, Dr Anxious Masuka said told the media this week that the GMB had cleared the ZWL157 billion that it owed farmers for maize and is left with a small portion of both the local and foreign currency component for the wheat that they delivered.

“Government has made strides to liquidate what we owe, in fact as of yesterday (March 11) only $1.6 billion in Zimbabwe dollar terms remains of the outstanding payment for wheat,” he said. “We also have an outstanding US dollar obligation amounting to US$24 million,” he said.

Dr Masuka said the government is committed to paying farmers for maize deliveries to the GMB timeously to enable them to return to the field.

“The discussion by cabinet was for Treasury to expedite farmers’ payments in order to motivate them for delivery to the GMB and it is in this context that the US$390 (per tonne) is for intake by the GMB.

“This is the current import price and we said that the payment by the GMB must be import parity in order to mop the additional excess grain that might still be on farms in order to supplement the GMB intake to meet the social welfare requirements.”

As part of a cocktail of measures to guarantee food security for all in light of the el-Niño-induced drought that has hit the entire southern African region, the government announced plans to introduce duty free importation of basics that include rice, cooking oil, maize for households while duty is also waived on rice and seed potato beginning next July.

Dr Masuka said it had been noted that 15 percent of Zimbabwe’s 15.1 million population now consume rice and potatoes as the main staple while the remaining 85 percent still consume maize.

“We are looking at alternate foods to maize. You can eat maize meal (sadza) and eat potato in the evening and perhaps rice and then there are those that consider rice and potatoes as alternatives.

“Many of the younger generation think that maize (sadza) is not what they need so their diet is primarily based on rice, potatoes and others for their starch component.

“Then there are substitutes that we can use for example, wheat flour in place of maize and we considered that 15 percent of the young generation now prefers to consume rice and potatoes,” he said.

He said, the country however produces only less than one percent of its rice requirement of 10 000 metric tons a month (120 000 metric tons per annum) so Cabinet decided to remove value added tax (VAT) to make it more affordable.

“We also looked at seed potatoes. We are able to produce somewhere in the region of 40 percent of our requirements, we consume somewhere in the region of 400 000 to 500 000 mt of Irish potato, table potato so for the 50 percent of seed that we import, we said that will ultimately lead to more expensive seed potato purchases so if we remove this component at input level, it will be more affordable.”

Dr Masuka said the amounts of the basics to be imported duty free at household level will be determined by the Ministries of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development and that of Industry and Commerce. New Ziana