Reserve agency to buy only 2 per cent of surplus maize

Dodoma. The government has set aside Sh15 billion with which the National Food Reserve Agency (NFRA) will purchase 28,000 tonnes of maize.

NFRA acting chief executive Vumilia Zikankuba revealed this in Dodoma on Wednesday September 18 when briefing journalists on the start of the maize-purchasing season.

She said, however, that the 28,000 tonnes was only two per cent of the 970,000 tonnes that was supposed to be purchased during the period.

The suggested two percent of the maize to be bought by the government means farmers countrywide will have to source for own market for the surplus production while the national reserve may also fall short of emergency relief should the situation remain the same in the long run .

Ms Zikankuba said the decision to purchase the amount was reached after considering NFRA’s limited storage capacity.

“We will purchase only 28,000 tonnes out of 970,000 tonnes due to storage constraints. Even if we had an adequate budget, it would still have been difficult for us to purchase all the maize because we don’t have the capacity to store it all.”

Asked how much maize had been harvested in the country this season, Ms Zikankuba said she was not the right person to provide an answer.

“You should ask the minister if you want to know the amount of maize produced this season because we only handle the surplus,” she said.

The Minister of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, Dr Charles Tizeba, could not be reached for comment after calls to his mobile number went unanswered.

Ms Zikankuba also said that NFRA had a surplus of two million tonnes of food, namely cereals and other agricultural produce.

Meanwhile, maize prices continued to decrease in the wake of increasing supply.

Prices dropped by an average of 19 per cent in one month, according to information provided by the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment.

In Dar es Salaam, the wholesale price of a 100-kilogramme bag of maize fell to Sh32,000 last Friday from Sh46,000 in August and Sh70,000 in May.

A random survey by The Citizen at various markets in the city established that retail prices dropped to an average of Sh700 a kilo from Sh1,000 in April, while a kilo of maize floor fetched between Sh900 and Sh1,200.

Rukwa District had the lowest price of Sh24,000 for a 100kg bag of maize, while the highest price of Sh53,000 was in Mwanza.

The Bank of Tanzania’s monthly economic review for July shows that wholesale maize prices fell to an average of Sh41,850 for a 100kg bag in June, this year, down from Sh90,149 in a similar period last year.

In Iringa Municipality, a 100kg bag was selling for Sh30,000 and less in the surrounding rural areas, thanks to a bumper harvest in the region.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, maize is the leading cereal crop cultivated in Tanzania.

It accounted for 74.3 per cent of all cereals and a total planted area of 6,067,996 hectares in 2017.