MEAL PRICES WILL BE REDUCED – MWEETWA

GOVERNMENT has encouraged production of fertilizer locally to ensure that the cost of mealie meal is reduced, Minister of Information and Media Cornelius Mweetwa has said.

Mr. Mweetwa explained that the local production of fertilizer was a major ingredient that informs the cost of production of maize which will ultimately lead to mealie meal prices being reduced,

 Speaking to The Scoop, Mr. Mweetwa who is also Chief Government Spokesperson said the government had done what could be referred to as positive discrimination by ensuring that local companies that were involved in the production of fertilizer such as basil dressing or D compound had done an affirmative action kind of approach.

 “Government ensured that it gave Nitrogen Chemicals of Zambia and United Capital Fertilizers which are local companies to ensure that they are the ones that were to produce the fertilizer on agreement that Government was going to purchase all its national fertilizer requirements from the producers,” he said.

 Mr. Mweetwa said in 2023 the government did not import a single grain of basal dressing from outside the country and that it had ensured that the pricing of fertilizer had gone down.

“There has been a saving made which has gone to inform the pricing of fertilizer. Further, we have not just, as a country, benefited in terms of being producers of fertilizer which will gradually and progressively be reduced in terms of pricing. But we have also been able to hold back local jobs which would have been exported had we been importing fertilizer from outside the country,” he said.

 He said Zambia was now well poised and had already begun to execute itself as a net exporter of fertilizer.

 Mr. Mweetwa said Zambia was recently exporting fertilizer to Botswana and it had already satisfied the national fertilizer average requirements.

 “As a country we went ahead to begin to export fertilizer to Egypt making it good news for us because when we export it means that we are now opening a revenue stream to kana, forex which is very important for this country,” he said.

 He said the production of fertilizer in Zambia was a step in the right direction for the Government stressing that it is also one of the steps taken to address the high cost of living in Zambia.

 “Furthermore, the President reaffirms his call to all our citizens to go out there and invest decent portfolios of hard work to ensure that we work hard so that when we work hard, we can produce more and the nation is responding in a very strong way,” he said.

 He said if more maize would be produced in the next market season the law of supply and demand would kick in and naturally the prices would begin to tumble.

 “These things are not going to be dealt with by a government wishing that the prices should go down, it has to be dealt with by us being involved in producing something and that is how economics works because we are currently found between the hard surface and a rock,” he said.