The Zimbabwe government, which has said it has produced enough grain to feed its people, is importing millions of dollars worth of the staple maize grain, a local privately owned paper said on Wednesday.
”Yes, we are importing maize,” Samuel Muvhuti, the acting chief executive officer of the country’s sole state-owned grain marketer, the Grain Marketing Board (GMB) told the Daily Mirror.
The government last month said the country, under its new land reform exercise, had produced 2,4-million tons of the staple corn, exceeding the country’s annual requirements of about two million tons.
It told donors it would not require any food aid this year and suspended a UN-led food assessment exercise.
But Muvhuti said the government had struck a deal with a US-based company, Sentry Financial International, for the import of $46-million worth of grain.
”Government, in fact, has gone into a deal with the US company to source food for us and the food is intended to feed the nation during the time the farmers would be harvesting,” Muvhuti was quoted as saying.
Farmers are currently harvesting grain produced in the just ended growing season.
The paper cites a letter from a local bank, mediating between the GMB and Sentry, offering $80-million credit for the importation of grain.
Zimbabwe, which has over the past three years depended on food aid and imports, announced last month it would not require assistance from international donors this year and neither would it need food imports.
It has forecasted that some 2,4-million tons of the staple corn, which surpasses the national annual requirements of between 1,8-million and two million tons, would be produced.
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) described the government’s crop prediction as ”absurd” and meant to win votes ahead of next year’s parliamentary elections.
President Robert Mugabe in a recent interview said there were other countries that needed food aid more than Zimbabwe.
”We are not hungry. It should go to hungrier people, hungrier countries than ourselves,” Mugabe said in an interview with British’s Sky television.
”Why foist this food upon us? We don’t want to be choked,” he said. – Sapa-AFP