Posted on 04/18/2002 1:25:16 PM PDT by End Times Sentinel
Government to Lower Maize Prices
Daily Times (Blantyre)
April 18, 2002
Posted to the web April 18, 2002
By Thomas Chafunya
Blantyre
GOVERNMENT has started working with donors and international agencies on modalities to reduce the current high maize prices from K850 per bag to an affordable price, Finance Minister Friday Jumbe said in Blantyre yesterday.
Jumbe said during the opening of the 2002/03 pre-budget consultations that there is a general agreement between donors and government to make prices of maize affordable.
He said signs have already started showing that another maize crisis which may spur an increase in prices.
'The current K850 is high but without the element of subsidy we will bring the prices down so that the people can afford it,' he said.
He said donors and other international agencies, who have been arguing that there is an abundance of other types of food apart from maize in the country, have started to share government's sentiments that the country is sailing through an acute food shortage.
He said there has been an overture in donor pledges whose donations will have a favourable impact on the price of maize torwards the poor.
The minister disclosed that another World Food Programme (WFP) team will come later this month to asses how best the safety-net programme in the food situation and maize price structure problem can be solved.
In an exclusive interview later, Jumbe said the new price structure of maize will be formulated by the ministries of Agriculture and Finance and the National Economic Council (NEC) where new lower prices than K850 per bag will be proposed.
'We will come up with new low prices of maize but also a structure that must give incentives to the farmers to grow more maize,' he said.
Jumbe said government will also come up with ways to mitigate high costs of transport that raise the landed cost of imported maize.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) mission led by Alfred Kammer advised government last month to draw up a food safety-net programme targeting the most vulnerable.
The mission also observed that maize prices which went up 500 percent have caused great shocks to the country's economy and shot up commody prices.
Your two pronged attack on the problem- price controls, which have always proven extremely successful in the past, and reliance on foreign aid should work together beautifully.
Yet, you go further, being the upstream thinkers you so obviously are, and actually identify the cause of the maize price inflation! “There isn’t enough.” Why, Adam Smith himself would be proud. Couldn’t have anything to do with the land seizures by Mad Bob and his ZanuPF thugs. Nope.
Another day, another shockingly clear sign that the continent slides further into the abyss of famine, disease, violence, poverty, despair and cannibalism.
Owl_Eagle
”Guns Before Butter.”
Owl _ Eagle
“Guns before butter.”
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