Blantyre | Tuesday
THE Malawi government, facing looming food shortages, said on Monday the country and donors will spend $8-million on free agricultural inputs for one million rural households.
The inputs include free fertiliser and seed, which will be given to villagers to spur maize production next year and ease food shortages at a time the government expects to import 180 000 tons of maize to ward off hunger.
“About one million households will benefit from this scheme. We hope for a good season,” said Ellard Malindi, principal secretary in the ministry of agriculture.
Malindi said the government, the European Union and Britain will sponsor the free packages to mostly poor villagers.
Malawi’s economy is agriculturally dependent, contributing 34% of gross domestic product and providing employment and subsistence to some 80% of its 11-million people.
“It will be an incentive to produce more,” he added.
Malawi produced over 2-million tons of maize in 1999, a national record, after free fertiliser and seed inputs were given to some three million households by the government and donors.
Food security is a pressing issue in Malawi, where an estimated 65% of rural households are unable to meet their nutritional requirements.
Meanwhile, inflation shot up to 30% in August, from its July level of 26%, the National Statistical Office (NSO) said this week in its economic bulletin.
The NSO on Monday attributed the rise to a decision by the Agriculture Development and Marketing Corporation (Admarc) to increase the consumer price of maize from three US dollars to $13 in August. Maize dominates the country’s consumer price basket.
Inflation in Malawi is traditionally depressed for seven months after the maize harvest, but rises during the planting and growing season. More than 50% of households in Malawi run out of their own home-grown maize stocks four to six months before the next harvest.
National food deficits have been aggravated by floods and other factors which have seen smallholder production drop from an average of 265 kilogrammes annually in 1971, to 129 kilogrammes in 1996. – AFP