NITROGEN Chemicals of Zambia(NCZ) has produced half of the 20,000 tonnes of the D compound fertiliser contracted by Government under the farmers input support programme (FISP) for the next farming season.
NCZ chief executive officer Richard Soko said the company had so far produced 10,000 tonnes of fertiliser under the Government’s subsidised inputs programme.
Mr Soko said although the production had started at a slow pace due to some difficulties the company was facing, the remaining 10,000 tonnes were expected to be completed in the next two weeks.
The Government has this year contracted NCZ to supply 20,000 tonees of D compound fertiliser while Nyiombo Investments and Omnia will provide urea fertiliser under the same programme.
Mr Soko said the company would fulfill its obligation by ensuring that the inputs were available on time.
NCZ currently faces serious financial constraints and was left out of the Government’s contract to supply farmers’ inputs after being declared incapable for the challenge.
But the Government recently said the contract given to the company to produce 20,000 tonnes of fertiliser would gauge NCZ’s capability and efficiency for future contracts.
Meanwhile, Government has released K50 billion to the Food Reserve Agency (FRA) for the crop marketing programme and all the farmers who have so far delivered their crops will be paid this week.
And the agency has confirmed that some districts have run out of empty grain bags because of the increased rate at which farmers were delivering maize and rice to the various depots.
FRA executive director Anthony Mwanaumo said in a statement the Government had released the K50 billion which was part of the K100 billion allocated to the agency in this year’s national Budget.
[Times of Zambia]
Can we quickly privatize NCZ to make it viable. It should no longer survive under life support. It needs to be independent and viable under private ownership.
# 1 I couldn’t agree more! N.C.Z has capacity to supply Southern Africa, the capacity of the plant is enormous! Government needs to find an equity partner and overhaul it and bring it to the required current standards. Kafue town needs a life line also!
# 1 Please advise the 3 E’s, we need investors to revive such entities. We dont need most of the investors your E’s are attracting now. We need genuine companies to bring back towns like Kafue back to life.
Motsepe # 3
Is standard of living and Kafue town declining? And any lay off at NCZ?
Yeah some thing should be done bout this plant. My fear is that it may not be a economicaly viable after the many years of misuse and outdated machinery.
I am reliably told though that it can and does produce competitively priced explosives . so one option could be to restructure it