One of Zimbabwe’s main bakeries has warned it has enough flour to last for just two more days, reports said on Wednesday.
Lobels Bread has already sent hundreds of workers on forced leave and has almost exhausted its reserve stock of flour, a company executive was quoted as saying.
”Flour availability has deteriorated and this has forced us to use our strategic stocks since May. Now we are only left with two days’ supply,” operations director Lemmy Chikomo told the government mouthpiece Herald daily.
”We have used all the 4 000 tonnes of flour that we had as reserve stock,” he said.
The Zimbabwe government is faced with a crippling wheat shortage.
Hand to mouth
At the weekend, Security Minister Didymus Mutasa admitted the country was living from hand to mouth as far as wheat stocks were concerned because it did not have enough hard currency to pay for the release of 36 000 tonnes of wheat stockpiled in neighbouring Mozambique.
Chikomo said his company had been forced to cut back on production. The company was now baking just 40 000 loaves a day, down from around 200 000 three months ago.
It has also closed down its factory in the second city of Bulawayo, and sent 1 500 workers in Harare on forced leave.
Although flour shortages are the main problem, bakers have also complained about the price at which President Robert Mugabe’s government is forcing them to sell bread.
In June the government ordered companies to slash prices by at least 50%, causing massive shortages of basics like cooking oil, meat, milk and fuel on the market.
Bread prices were slashed to Z$22 000 a loaf from Z$45 000, although later raised to Z$30 000.
Most bakeries have been operating at a loss owing to the price controls, and only limited quantities of bread is being baked, leading to long bread queues in many towns and cities.
The Bakers Association of Zimbabwe says it costs more than Z$55 000 to make a single loaf. The association is pushing for a selling price of Z$73 000 a loaf, said the Herald.
Lobels Bread had incurred Z$100-billion in debt after it was forced to borrow money to sustain operations since May, said the paper, quoting a letter the company wrote in July to the country’s industry minister.
Basics such as milk, meat, cooking oil and sugar are rarely found on the formal market now. At the few places where bread is still available, there are long queues of people. Commentators say hundreds of office workers in central Harare are turning to ice cream as a lunchtime substitute.
There seems little prospect of relief, especially as Zimbabwe’s wheat harvest due at the end of October is expected to be the worst in seven years. Zimbabwe’s millers need 450 000 tonnes of wheat a year.
Experts say power shortages disrupted irrigation of this year’s wheat crop, which is likely to be way below the 78 000 tonnes reaped last year. – Sapa-DPA