By PASSY HAACHIZO –
MAIZE has to date remained a staple food for Zambia’s inhabitants as the majority of the households depend on mealie-meal for consumption.
However, the first month of this year has seen the panic-buying of mealie-meal by the residents, a situation which saw most retails and wholesales go for some days without the commodity.
A check by the Times Features in some shops in Kabwe recently proved that Shoprite, Choppies and National Milling in the central business district did not have mealie-meal in stock.
However, long queues could be seen making curves inside and outside Simba Milling and Tita together with few other wholesales that still had a bit of the commodity.
The shortage of the commodity in the big shops had an adverse effect on the market as the shop owners dotted in the district were at liberty to sell the mealie-meal at any price of their choice.
In the third week of January, the price for a 25 kilogramme (kg) breakfast bag of mealie-meal in Shoprite was fetching at K185, in National Milling a 25kg of breakfast was at K180 and Roller meal was at K123 retail price.
Tita had Easy Way Milling Coompany Limited, Kapiri-Mposhi brand which sold a 25 kg of breakfast mealie-meal at K210.
Simba Milling had a 25 kg of breakfast sold at K175 while a 10 kg fetched at K75 in that order.
Chanda Kaseba, a shop owner and trader at Railways Market, says mealie-meal had become on demand in the community.
Mr Kaseba said the shop owners had the monopoly to dictate the prices on how each desired their bags would sell.
He said 15 bags were usually finished within a day and that retailers had also limited the buyers on the number of bags each client had to buy for resale.
Central Province Permanent Secretary Milner Mwanakampwe urged the residents in the province to stop panic-buying of mealie-meal.
Mr Mwanakampwe said recently that there was no need for panic as the Food Reserve Agency (FRA) was supplying the local millers with enough maize grain to increase production and supply in the region.
He said FRA had offloaded a huge number of metric tonnes of maize to Zambia National Service (ZNS) and also Kalonga Milling Company owned by the Zambia Correctional Service.
Mr Mwanakampwe said the Government had mounted a serious engagement with millers by giving them more stocks of maize from FRA and that FVG, a Kabwe-based miller, was able to collect between five tonnes and 30 tonnes of maize from Chisamba Depot on a single day.
He noted that the methodical intervention resulted in the lowering of the price of a bag of 25kg breakfast from K190 as of last week to only K160 at FVG on wholesale basis while on retail the same was selling at K165.
“We want to encourage our people to stop panic-buying, when Simba Milling has brought one truck you want to see everyone lining up to go and buy, there are now huge trucks coming to bring mealie-meal in Kabwe. You will note that from Thursday last week a bag of mealie-meal that was fetching at about K190 has now come to about K160 at FVG on wholesale basis, on retail basis you get it at K165,”Mr Mwanakampwe said.
“In the province, for KVG on daily basis was getting 150 tonnes while Kalonga’s prisons company had the potential to receive between 10, 000 tonnes to 20, 000 tonnes of maize by the close of the week,”Mr Mwanakampwe said.
He added: “We have enough maize stocks in the country that can take our people for another year and half but I wish to state that we will not be reluctant to deal with our millers who want to exploit our people and this will further bring down the cost of bag of mealie-meal that was precipitated by some millers and that we will not relent as we want to show people that the President loves them.”
However, Central Province Minister Credo Nanjuwa was concerned with some millers who were getting maize from the Food Reserve Agency (FRA) at a cheaper price and exported mealie before they could satisfy the local market.
Mr Nanjuwa warned the Government would be selective in selling cheaper maize to millers because of those who had become selfish by rushing into exporting the commodity without satisfying the local market.
He said it was sad that after the FRA supplied cheaper maize to millers, some millers instead of first satisfying the local market they concentrated on export to satisfy their desires.
He said this in an interview on January 2, this year after touring KDC and Natuseko depots in Kabwe with District Commissioner Lenox Shimwambwa to ascertain the maize in stock in the district.
Mr Nanjuwa said as much as export would not be banned, it was imperative that the millers first satisfied the local markets before considering exporting the commodity.
“We are thinking there are other millers who when they produce they supply the local market, so as government I must say that FRA is a strategic Agency that when there is a shortfall we release cheaper maize to the millers so that our people are secured but selfishness is at play as there are millers that are exporting what they are getting from FRA at low cost which is not right,” Mr Nanjuwa said.
He added: “We may go a selective way by ensuring FRA supplies adequately those who are satisfying the local market.”
Mr Nanjuwa said the Government was looking into the issue of ensuring the two Ministries of Agriculture and Defence mopped what was in the satellite depots.
He said to have 6, 000 bags in the two depots in a district that had a huge population like Kabwe was a wakeup call that maize needed to be collected from various depots and be taken closer to the millers.
“If for example, the millers told me that the stock that we have is in Luano, they will say it is costly to transport from Luano and the bag of mealie-meal will rise to K300, we cannot allow that because our people cannot afford,” he said.
It is important that as much as the Government leaves millers to export the mealie-meal, they should come up with an initiative to monitor to ensure they supply a certain per cent into the local market before turning to the outside market.