MEALIE meal prices in Livingstone have remained high despite the recent assurances that more maize had been offloaded to millers.
A check conducted in major retail outlets yesterday revealed that the price of a 25 kilogramme (kg) bag of breakfast meal was stuck around K65 and above from the previous average price of K55 last year.
At Spar Livingstone, the outlet was selling a 25kg bag of breakfast meal at K65 while the price of the commodity at Total Livingstone was K68.
At Dambwa Central Market, the price of a 25 kg bag of breakfast meal at stood at K66.
Shoprite Town Centre outlet in the tourist capital was selling a 25 kg bag of breakfast meal at K64.99.
Recently, some millers in Livingstone attributed the hikes in the price of the commodity to the shortage of maize on the market.
But the Food Reserve Agency (FRA) said it had offloaded more than 30,000 tonnes of maize on the market to mitigate the shortage of mealie-meal.
FRA public relations officer Daniel Msoka said in contrary to views of certain stakeholders that FRA was not releasing maize on the market, the agency has offloaded 30,838 tonnes of maize.
Mr Msoka said of the 50,000 tonnes FRA had said it would release, it has so far offloaded more than 30,000.
He said the agency had received 23 applications from millers that wanted to buy maize.
Agriculture and Livestock Minister Bob Sichinga said the Government was not going to implore other price control measures for mealie meal other than the one taken to increase supply of the stable food.
Mr Sichinga was surprised that while the price of mealie meal in Lusaka had dropped to somewhere around K64, millers in other parts of the country such as Copperbelt had maintained a high price of around K74 on the commodity.
Wrong solutions to the real problem of our populations.
The raison of the high price of the mealie meal is not in Zambia but in DRC.
Whenever they (GRZ, Katumbi) need some CASH, they find a reason to ban the exportation of mealie meal to create shortage in Katanga Province. Katumbi will then be the only exporter or importer (depending on which side you are…) of mealie meal to DRC. He will sell 100 or 200 trucks before everything goes back to normal. MMD did it, PF is doing it. Let’s just be patient,…..
Do you know who katumbi is? The guy has money and he is a serious businessman. Accuse GBM for such not Katumbi.
Bwesheni ubunga
What is ZNS doing kanshi. They ve huge tracts of land, machinery and manpower. Let them grow maize in huge quantities n supply them with milling plants, chapwa.
These funny milling companies will just start behaving themselves when big bwana ZNS start producing ubunga at affordable rates.