The Food Reserve Agency (FRA) has maintained the maize floor price of K65, 000 for a 50 kilogram (Kg) bag of maize and K60, 000 for a 40 kg bag of paddy rice.
And the FRA says it has targeted to purchase 1.3 million metric tonnes of maize at a cost of K1.69 trillion in this year’s agriculture marketing season.
The Agency has also set June 1 to October 31st as the period for 2011 agriculture crop marketing adding that the FRA will only buy maize with moisture content of about 12 percent.
FRA board Chairman, Brigadier General Maybin Sikweti announced this at a media briefing in Lusaka today.
He said that the agency arrived at the prices after carefully analyzing the cost of production and the prevailing local and regional markets.
“These prices were arrived at after carefully analyzing the cost of production and also after taking into account the prevailing local and regional market conditions.
” Initially we were supposed to reduce the prices of the commodities because we have a surplus but instead decided to maintain the floor prices considering the production cost our farmers have put in,” He said.
Meanwhile, the FRA is targeting to purchase 1.3 million metric tonnes of maize at a cost of K1.69 trillion in this year’s agriculture marketing season.
Brigadier General Sikweti said FRA will also purchase 5000 metric tonnes of paddy rice valued at K7.5 billion.
The Board Chairperson said the money to finance the exercise will be through government grants, crop sales and commercial borrowing.
He announced that the FRA has repaid the loan sourced from Finance Bank which it acquired last year for crop purchasing adding that it is in the process of repaying the US$140 million loan acquired from Standard Chartered by July this year.
Meanwhile the FRA has set June 1 to October 31st as the period for 2011 agriculture crop marketing adding that the FRA will only buy maize with moisture content of about 12 percent.
The Board Chairperson said the agency has since set up satellite deports in all the 74 districts where farmers will be selling their produce.
“The agency has set up buying points in all the 74 districts on average 15 satellite depots per district will be opened to ensure that the farmers have access to the market,” he said.
He has however said urged farmers to use the floor prices as guidelines when negotiating with other private buyers on the market.
Brigadier General Sikweti said FRA has embarked on a construction of 98 slabs in strategic positions with a total capacity of 450,000 metric tonnes to avert the challenges of limited storage space.
He also said that FRA has exported about 290,000 metric tonnes of maize valued at US$ 48.2 million to Zimbabwe, Namibia, Mozambique and Congo DR.
“The FRA has also sold about 168,000 metric tonnes of maize valued at US$ 27.9 million to local millers in addition about 2,600 metric tonnes have been sold to local communities while 18,600 metric tonnes have been released to the Disaster management and mitigation Unit (DMMU) for relief distribution purposes” he said.
Zambia has this year recorded another bumper harvest of over 3 million metric tonnes of maize.
ZANIS
Good news for us farmers. RB is going to sell his over 2000 bags by 65000 kwacha. Enough for campaigning. Zimbabwe, Congo and Angola are selling above K85,000. Whoever is blaming RB has no value and worthiless. My village has satellite dishes, solar panels, boreholes all from farming. No poverty in my village. They all support RB He has put more money in their pockets. This is a real picture. Anyone doubting should visit Kalomo, Choma, Monze, Mumbwa, Chisamba. Money in the pocket is in the rural areas not bus stops, streets or compounds.
I expect few comments on this topic especially from PF supporters
not only few but zero
FRA are cheating farmers. They buy maize at 52kgs and not 50 kgs as they say. They always talk of moisture content but we never used to hear of problems with moisture content when co-operatives were still functioning? Why cant they wait until maize has right moisture contnet they want instead of cheating farmers in the name of moisture? Where does the 2 kgs go? Even if the bag of maize is weighed after a year it will not have lost 2 kgs of weight. I think bureau of trading standards or an organisation with similar functions must come in to sort out this moisture and rescue farmers from day light theft. There is no where in the world they make an offer price of certain commodity and then demand for more weight when the commodity is supplied. That is cheating.
#1 zambia is not your village alone i can tell you life has been dificult only big farmers have survived due to expensive fertilizer which they use as part of campaign.
Easy go back to the land and make money through Agri.
FRA is insolvent. They bought maize at 65 pin per bag last year using borrowed money from banks and sold the same maize at 50 pin per bag. And the so called educated Zambians are saying Banda is working. My foot! This country will be bankrupt, just wait and see.
We are headed for doom.RB’s aim is to leave the national coffers empty. The scheme is to make sure that Sata finds nothing! How else do you interprete the subsides on maize, un budgeted expenditure on many campaign projects especially roads which are not even going to be worked on due to lack of funds. The maize will not be paid for in time and drama will unfold during the campaigns. Bankruptcy is in RB’s blood.Remember the level to which he had dropped at the tight heaven opened for him through late Levy! Lets wait and see!
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