Pressure piles on govt to redesign AIP

Pressure is piling up on government to redesign the Affordable Inputs Programme (AIP) by addressing the existing pitfalls and make efficient use of public resources.

Stakeholders in the agriculture sector on Thursday held a roundtable discussion in Lilongwe under the theme ‘Options for Redesigning the Affordable Input Programme for Diversified Agricultural Growth’.

The discussions organised by an agriculture policy think-tank, the Malawi Agriculture Policy Advancement Agenda (Mwapata) Institute, was aimed at looking at ways of promoting interventions that would benefit farmers and achieve food security.

In his remarks, Ministry of Economic Principal Secretary Affairs Winford Masanjala observed that government needs to have an AIP that is sustainable, has value for money and is delivered cost-efficiently.

Masanjala also pointed out that targeting of beneficiaries was paramount in the redesigning of the programme to ensure maximum benefits.

Said Masanjala: “The proposal by Mwapata Institute is that we need to segregate our farmers into three categories, namely: the resource poor farmers who should benefit from social protection, productive farmers who have land and labour but have no inputs, and these should be eligible for AIP, and lastly, market ready farmers who should be taken care of by different programmes.

He added that government is also looking at other groups of people that need to be targeted and how much should be their benefit package.

In his contribution, Chikwawa North legislator Owen Chomanika said the reforms as proposed by Mwapata Institute are welcome, saying Parliament is already trying to fine-tune logistics of AIP to ensure that transport hitches in delivering the inputs are ironed out.

Said Chomanika: “The whole programme needs to be redesigned and this is a process which will take a lot of discussion among different stakeholders.”

Some of the challenges facing the subsidy programme, according to Mwapata Institute are the crowding out of the private sector by displacing on average of 15-21 percent of commercial inputs sales, low and declining maize yield response to nitrogen fertiliser and high opportunity costs.

Mwapata Institute is, therefore, proposing that in the short-term government should consider a streamlined, smarter subsidy programme for productive beneficiaries who only lack economic access to commercial inputs.