By KENNEDY MUPESENI –
THE Government should provide incentives for the private sector to build storage in areas lacking the facilities thereby reducing post-harvest losses, an agriculture think tank has recommended.
Indaba Agriculture Policy Research Institute (IAPRI) said in its latest policy brief that the private sector has the capacity to build new storage facilities.
“The private sector has the capacity to build new storage facilities, so rather than providing new facilities directly, the Government should incentivise the private sector to build storage in areas where it is lacking. This storage should focus on growing new markets and providing storage to support trade,” it sates.
Current storage capacity amount to over one million tonnes and those efforts in  the new Food Reserve Agency (FRA)  Act  should focus on rehabilitating the current storage and ensuring it meets required warehousing standards.
“With the exception of designated strategic reserve locations, these facilities should be available for the private sector to lease,” IAPRI states.
It states that the role of the FRA should be to provide oversight on storages and eventually managed by the private sector to further reduce costs.
“This would make the operations of the agency more cost effective and be in line with the Government’s well publicized move to a private sector led market and rationalize the operations of the FRA as set out in the Seventh National Development Plan (7NDP) and PF Manifesto,” it states.
The think tank says there was no question that Zambia requires a well managed strategic grain reserve to stabilise staple food prices for the benefit of both consumers and producers.
But that as an initial step towards having an effective stabilisation policy, the Government should review the country’s strategic grain reserve requirement, including its size and procurement modalities.