The Food Reserve Agency (ZRA) has paid out at least K1.3 billion to farmers who have sold their maize to the agency out of the K4.3 billion that was disbursed to the Copperbelt province this year.
FRA Executive Director, Anthony Mwanaumo, said this when officials from the agency paid a courtesy call on the Acting Provincial Deputy Permanent Secretary, Elli Mulemwa, at the provincial administration office this morning.
Dr. Mwanaumo said the FRA was now paying farmers on a weekly basis, adding that in certain districts, it was paying farmers twice a week.
He told Mr. Mulemwa that crop marketing in the province was slow this year.
He said so far the agency has only managed to buy about a quarter of its targeted tonnes of maize from farmers in the province.
Dr. Mwanaumo, who guaranteed that any farmer who delivers maize to FRA would be paid within a week as funds were readily available, attributed the development to the high level of private sector participation in the business.
He said the private sector was buying a 50 kilogramme bag of maize at between K50, 000 and K55, 000, compared to the FRA’s K45, 000.
While acknowledging that there was nothing wrong with farmers selling their crop to the private sector, Dr Mwanaumo said there was need for strengthening of regulations to ensure that scales used by private buyers were properly sized.
He said farmers should get full value for their maize, hence the need to use correctly set scales in weighing maize.
He said in some areas, farmers were paid K55, 000 for a 50kg bag of maize at the point of delivery in town.
This entailed that farmers were incurring a loss of more than K15, 000 per bag in terms of other transaction costs and transport.
Dr. Mwanaumo has since challenge the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives to provide farmers with information concerning transaction and transport costs.
The delegation is in the province on its routine monitoring of the marketing programme, which will close on September 30th 2008.
ZANIS/PC/KSH/ENDS
pay all the farmers in the country.
Yes pay all the farmers in the country. How can we be sure that it is not only a few selected farmers who have been paid?
…Honestly, the FRA is not what its name entails anymore, rather it is a business. Without the farmers,what would FRA be? FRA is supposed to reserve food, but for what? It seems to me that, nobody really cares about empowering and support the local market, in this regard, the farmers. Stop making private arrangement and start playing fair across the board. eyes are on you!
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