Committee casts doubt on fertiliser availability

The Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture and Food Security has faulted Ministry of Agriculture for proceeding with the launch of Affordable Inputs Programme (AIP) when the country does not have required quantities of fertiliser.

Speaking yesterday when the Ministry of Agriculture officials appeared before the committee to update it on AIP, committee chairperson Sameer Suleman said there are a number of bottlenecks that needed to be resolved before the ministry asked President Lazarus Chakwera to launch the programme in Chiradzulu on Saturday.

He said the ministry has also not finished registration of beneficiaries and contracts for suppliers of goats and seeds have not been concluded.

Suleman said: “The President won’t just get up to launch the programme. It has to come from the ministry. This is a blunder. You are exposing the President to something that tomorrow he will not have answers to because you have rushed. What is the rush for? Why go and launch the programme?

“We are launching a programme where we are not even ready with the list of beneficiaries. The register is not even completed and suppliers have not signed the contracts.”

He called on those advising the President to stop misleading him.

“People will not talk ill about the ministry. They will talk ill about the one who launched it, who happens to be the President,” Suleman said.

He also dismissed reports that 87 percent of the required  fertiliser is available, saying the country has only 75 000 metric tonnes in Smallholder Farmers Fertiliser Revolving Fund of Malawi (SFFRFM) warehouses.

“The country needs about 620 000 metric tonnes of fertiliser as annual consumption. Out of that about 370 000 metric tonnes is what goes into AIP and they are telling us that 87 percent of that fertiliser is already in Malawi. We know that we do not have that fertiliser in Malawi,” said Suleman.

During the meeting, the committee also expressed concern over the price of seeds which at between K8 000 and K9 000 could be prohibitive to farmers as  fertiliser has been pegged at K7 500 per 50 kilogramme bag.

In an interview after the meeting, Ministry of Agriculture Principal Secretary Erica Maganga said the country has enough fertiliser stocks to kick-start the programme.

Maganga said: “We already procured about 127 000 metric tonnes of fertiliser which is part of the buffer stock of which 75 000 metric tonnes has almost been supplied.

“If you look at the total buffer stock which is 127 000 metric tonnes against the total requirement of fertiliser which is about 374 000 metric tonnes, this is 34 percent of the total fertiliser that we have in the country.

On challenges relating to seeds, she said the ministry initially planned for the seed to be at K6 000 when the budget estimate was K24 billion.

She, however, said the programme has only been allocated K12 billion has seen government contributing about K3 000 towards seeds. Maganga said the gap will have to be met by farmers.

She, however, hoped the programme would go on smoothly and she called on farmers to buy hybrid seeds and plant on time. She also urged them to plant legumes.

Fertiliwser Association of Malawi executive administration officer Mbawaka Phiri said it would be difficult to tell how much fertiliser is in the country as they only keep records of its members.

She said she needed to consult the association’s members on the stocks.

This year’s programme, to benefit 3.7 million households, is budgeted at K142 billion of which K124.74 billion is earmarked for fertiliser purchases, K1.26 billion for purchases of goats and K12.25 billion for purchase of seed.