President Edgar Lungu had called on the Food Reserve Agency (FRA) to farmers competitive prices for their grain during the 2019 marketing period.
Making an address during the National Field Day in Kapisha, Chief Mibenge’s area in Mansa, President Lungu noted challenges delayed payments to farmers and called on the FRA to pay farmers on time and also pay them competitive prices.
The President prodded the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Finance to work together and sort out what the perennial problems of delayed payments to farmers and suppliers.
President Lungu also urged the Ministry of Agriculture to conclude negotiations with inputs suppliers by May so that in turn inputs would be distributed on time to farmers. He said he would like to see inputs distributed before the onset of rains. And President Lungu reiterated that the country will not export mealie meal until it is ascertained that there is enough for the country.
The President also said only excess grain will be exported after harvest.
Government has called on millers to invest in their own storage sheds and stop their dependency on FRA maize supplies for their businesses.
President Lungu observed during the National Field Day in Mansa that millers have been leaning heavily on the FRA maize supplies instead of getting in the fields and out flung areas to buy their own grain from farmers.
The President said this should stop and urged millers to invest in their own storage facilities in strategic farming areas. He warned that in future millers would find it hard to purchase maize from FRA.
This proves the problem has never really been the president.
I hope that puts this one to bed.
I am a phd holder.
Thanks
BB2014,2016
Partya Fipuba… Why red carpet in the farm??
Finance 101 … keep money in circulation all the time. The ZMK needs to turn a minimum of 8 times from employer/worker/trader/product & service provider/to business/shopper/to another trader/to a wholesaler before it gets back to the bank.
Anything short of that does not grow any economy at all. So, everyone gets paid on time and everyone pays their dues on time and the circulation amplifier just keeps chunning the cash in circulation and the economy keeps growing.
That’s why is illegal to hold cash and keep it under your mattress because you would be slowing economic growth. The problems become even bigger if GRZ is not release funds on time; be it for farmers or civil servants, etc.
Let’s roll … epo mpelele,
BRM
As usual LAZY LUNGU is detached from reality and in denial…this is why this man needs a Press conference to see the state of his mind. I watched the young refreshing KBF and was impressed compared to this moron Edgar who always issuing blind orders and silly directives.
Jj i have told you to use hectare and acres in your comments to avoid vulgarism.
@Oval Head
Gay Gay has no decency at all … you can’t be goading the President all the time and draw your satisfaction from that. Maybe because he now lives in the “NOT SO Great Britain” where they have no constitution and no president just a Prime Minister.
What a pathetic place to live and at the same time try to lecture the smart people of the Zambian Enterprise who still have full control over their lives and can choose any President they want and don’t have to depend on the monarch for decrees.
The President has welcomed any challenges and I really want KBF to fight hard at the convention so that they show case their visions for the country. So, if KBF was a dose of fresh air … guess what that’s what real democracies bring about.
Let’s roll …
They calling for a fake convention knowing all the challengers to the pf leadership have been threatened away from the challenge with GBH ,
Lungu is most likely behind and is directing those threats with KZ , if he was not , why is he just watching people like fube being threatened by PF followers ? If lungu believed in democracy he would rebuke those that are threatening fube
They calling for a fake convention knowing all the challengers to the pf leadership have been threatened away from the challenge with GBH ,
Lungu is most likely behind and is directing those threats with KZ , if he was not , why is he just watching people like fube being threatened by PF followers ?
If lungu believed in democracy he would rebuke those that are threatening fube
People who have never commented on maize and farmer welfare today are doing so, this is in encouraging but we need more of you guys to take an active interest in issues that are not just political drama but real developmental issues such as in this case food security as well as govt wasteful expenditure on non essential items, and our repressive and outdated legal system.
Hypocritical liar has ranted again
He talks like one who is not presiding over the ministries. He speaks like an opposition party leaders. Does he get reports from his subordinates? “The president calls on” surely a person who has grip of his government can speak like this. Where is the lame duck minister responsible for the ministry?
Phd holder? My foot, nothing but a bonehead!!!
Our political leaders must stop reading prepared speeches and begin to WORK for once. So this guy has no dashboard to check what is actually going on? He has no relatives who are affected and have already alerted him to this? Nowadays I just have questions because things are now spinning out of control in terms of making sense.
Remember the boob he made in Roan when campaigning when he said he “didn’t know” that the people of Roan were suffering like the way he found them “suffering”. We are in a different age so 1960s politics will not work anymore.
The same song we hear every year…
Oooh, my God. Making decision at a wrong time has became a risky and costly business to some situation like in agriculture because it depends on rain which has special period with large scale impart. People had various complains in November reaction came at the end of April about 5 months past. Land preparation(September to Mid-October),planting and supplying of seeds and compound D(Late October to late December),applying top dressing (mid-December to late January),harvesting and selling to FRA(July to early August) and getting paid(Mid-August and early September). So the decisions should be made much earlier. Now paying farmers a year after the farming season ends up with the clapping of hands by cadres not farmers
I live in Mbala where I am a farmer with a miller just within town and storage of his own with higher prices than FRA. Yet government locks him out from buying maize and has to buy back when he can literary produce and support the need by over 20%. And he pays cash for the grain but the way things have turned out in the recent past, he has slowed down to let be.
Mr Farmer what are trying to tell us?
This President is so irritating! His ATM ministry also known as Chitotela is ever loaded with cash but there’s no money for peasant farmers and he wants to pretend like he cares! Does he even know how many farmers would have been paid from the money spent on the plane he shares with drug pusher called Findlay?
That stup!d symbol.
Awe aba chipuba, that’s all.
I dont know whether the president talks from an informed position or falls into some lapses.He speaks like he is not the head of government. Does he have people who brief him on the state of the nation or is it just that most of the time his senses are under the influence of some factors which himself knows?Indeed these are wasted years and we shall pay dearly.
Imagine where does he think FRA gets its money from? He just banned export of maize because Kaizer had finished moving his trucks..the bum has no shame ..let him go jogging like a small boy he is
Sean Tembo! Has a case
This hopeless chatalan …..all ways presiding over failing systems …..yet nobody pays the price put the poor citizens
All we can say is ,vote wisely next time…..
He is there telling FRA to pay on time and at competitive prices yet he sees this data before its released to the public …this politics of 1960 in this era of social media is obsolete…people will start booing him
Decisions are made out of IMPULSE or EMOTIONAL . For instance sales tax,the building a Church in Chilenje,the suspension of Practicing licence for KBF,the sell and later suspension of maize exports,the closure of CBU the list goes on.
The decisions should made after analyzing the situation,focus,well researched,with purpose and yield positive results .And able to stand a test of time
“The President said this should stop and urged millers to invest in their own storage facilities in strategic farming areas. He warned that in future millers would find it hard to purchase maize from FRA.”
Your Excellency, those are what are called supply chains in a normal functioning modern economy. It is not necessary for all Millers to create large storages for their own grain if roads, transporters etc and FRA itself are in a good state. Next millers will be told to grow their own maize and wheat, nothing wrong with that but it is up to their individual business models. I hope that you are not going to DIRECT that farmers must produce their own fertilizers, seeds and chemicals etc, and even tractors for their own farms.
This is where Lubinda Hanzoka needs to educate the President…
This is where Lubinda Hanzoka needs to educate the President and not behaving like a party cadre. And of course the President must be receptive to learning new things apart from law, instead of acting like the know it all that he is. The Presidency is a position of leadership, and no one should think that when elected then you are more intelligent than the people around you, the advisors etc. A good President needs to listen widely and learn widely. And of course not rely solely on party cadres for “knowledge”, they simply do not have the specialised knowledge that is needed to run a country’s economy.