Finance Minister Margaret Mwanakatwe says the distribution of Agro inputs under the Farmer Input support program FISP using the E-voucher has been infiltrated by fake Agro dealers who are siphoning money from the government.
Mrs. Mwanakatwe says the money that the government invested in the programme is going down the drain.
She says this is one of the reasons why payments to agro dealers has delayed this season.
Mrs. Mwanakatwe said this in Nakonde during a sales Tax consultative meeting where an agro dealer wanted to know when government will pay agro dealers for inputs supplied under the FISP.
Mrs. Mwanakatwe said the government has so far paid out 69 million Kwacha under the E-voucher for the 2018/2019 farming season.
She however assured agro-dealers and farmers that the government will not delay the distribution of inputs under the 2019-2020 farming season.
She means infiltrated by pf thugs. Btw Guys I am in another predicament. My mixed race son’s blonde girlfriend has just sent me a text message saying she thinks am cute and fit. You people what would you do in my position? I blame these good looks. I am tired of people hitting on me at my age. Should I tell my son?
Ih now you are waking up- or atleast pretending to. The thugs in question are all PF cadres. We all know that.
So who do you blame for this…why no arrests? Must be PF thugs and ministers
Incompetent. Exactly the number of letters running up to the end of tenure of this hopeless political administration. By the letter T if nothing is done it will be gobbledygook!
Infiltrated by Rupiah Banda’s professional looters like this one
Just scrap that FISP thing!
It’s just a conduit for mass corruption and money laundering!
Just liberalize the Maize Business and allow Farmers space to Export their Maize!
If you do that, real farmers will be motivated to look for their own fertilizer and grow the crop four times every year under irrigation!
Farmers get put off with Maize export bans!
If you look at Soil Science, Farmers don’t even need Fertilizer! Let them learn to use Compost! It’s a low cost input and maintains soil fertility for the long-term!
True. Before the introduction of fertilizers and hybrid maize seeds Luapula never had problems with food. But now it’s complaint after complaint. It’s either the inputs are late or the wrong fertilizer has been delivered. Even those who are just plain lazy are using the input as an excuse for not working. The other thing I have observed is that the cooperatives don’t care whether one has land or not but just issue the inputs which are mostly sold or exchanged with beer.
Let logic prevail and scrap E–Voucher completely. Reduce taxation or completely remove it on all agro inputs so that agro dealers in turn can reduce the prices of inputs such as fertilizer, fertilizer being the key input.
Good points but it cannot work 1) Politics 2) The agro dealers will just abuse this arrangement. We no longer have honest people in Zambia.
@Ndanji The govt need to do their maths, I can assure you that the money govt is spending in E-voucher is less than the tax revenue govt is collecting from agro dealers nationwide. So why not do the logical thing make it a point that for agro dealers than sell their inputs key input being fertilizer at a specific affordable price below the current market price they will be exempt say two percentage points for those on Turn Over Tax and 5 points for those on VAT or now Sales Tax.