 The government on Thursday banned non-governmental organisations from distribution food aid to hungry Zimbabweans accusing the NGOs of using aid to mobilize support for the opposition – a charge the groups deny.
 Industry sources said the government’s Grain Marketing Board (GMB) did not have any wheat at all at its silos while another 20 000 tonnes of wheat harvested this seasons where stuck on farms as producers refuse to deliver the staple grains because of low prices.
 The GMB is paying ZW$42 million dollars for every tonne of wheat delivered while farmers are demanding over 150 billion dollars a tonne. International wheat prices are around US$650 a tonne which would be Z$650 billion a tonne at the official exchange rate.
 The sources said the country was only expecting 1 000 tonnes of wheat, which are in transit from Mozambique and expected this coming week.
 Another 3 500 tonnes of wheat have been paid for in South Africa as well as an additional 1 500 tonnes of wheat purchased from Mozambique according to sources.
 David Govere, chief executive of Harambe Holdings – a key player in the bakery industry – said even if additional wheat were to be paid for this week, it would take a minimum of three to four weeks before this could be delivered as ready for baking flour to bakeries.
 Govere said government needed to secure enough foreign currency to secure the wheat and move it speedily but said this would be a very tall order, given foreign currency shortages gripping Zimbabwe since 1999.
 The baker urged the government to move away from distributing cheap inputs as incentives and instead focus more on providing output incentives such as good producer prices to drive production.
 The government is currently providing cheap fertilizer, cheap diesel, subsidized seed, free tractors and equipment, free land and free agricultural advisory extension services.
 Critics blame Zimbabwe’s food crisis directly on President Robert Mugabe’s haphazard fast-track land reform exercise that displaced established white commercial farmers and replaced them with either incompetent or inadequately funded black farmers.
 Food production plunged by about 60 percent as a result while chaos in agriculture because of the often violent farm seizures also hit hard Zimbabwe’s once impressive manufacturing sector that had depended on a robust farming sector for orders and inputs.
 Most of Zimbabwe’s companies have since the beginning of farm seizures in 2000 either closed completely or scaled down operations to below 30 percent of capacity, in a country where unemployment is more than 80 percent.
Efforts to get a comment from Agriculture Minister Rugare Gumbo yesterday were fruitless with his office saying he was out of the country on business. – ZimOnline
Post published in: News