Millers close as GMB supplies run dry

s on Friday last week forced to close its operations because they the GMB had failed to make any allocations to them. Mugabe’s disastrous price slash has compounded the situation, millers said.
The GMB had not responded to written questions sent to it by this newspaper up to the time of going to print.
But the state-grain utility has recently claimed in the official media that it has increased the allocation of wheat to millers from 2,000 to 4,000 tonnes a week. But millers say they want 7,800 tonnes weekly, the amount allotted them before the shortages began setting in.
Bread shortages were reported across the country. In Gweru bakers told The Zimbabwean that bread was also running short in the Midlands town.
In Bulawayo, supplies were intermittent this week after drying up towards the end of last week.
Prominent bakery owner David Govere said the bread shortages would worsen unless the GMB quickly imported at least 125,000 tonnes of wheat which he said would be enough to feed the country until the next harvest in October.
The GMB has said it will import only 50 000 tonnes of wheat but none of it has arrived in Zimbabwe yet.
“We will continue to have bread shortages, especially during weekends when millers are closed because we have inadequate flour supplies in the country and some bakers might even fail to produce bread at all,” Govere said.
One of Zimbabwe’s biggest bakeries, Bakers Inn, said it had this week managed to produce its normal 320,000 loaves a day only because of the strategic reserves of flour it kept.
Last week millers applied to the government to be allowed to increase the price of flour by up to 25 percent, citing rising output costs. But government has said any increase has to be approved by Industry minister Obert Mpofu first.
If the bread shortage persists, it will only be the latest basic commodity to be in short supply in Zimbabwe, which is grappling with severe shortages of nearly everything, including foreign currency, the staple maize meal and sugar because of a deepening economic crisis blamed on the government’s mismanagement.