By PRISCA LUMINGU in Chipata
THE Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) mealie meal being imported from South Africa is not meant for the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) but would be sold in Zambia’s border towns to ease the deficit of the commodity the country has been faced with, Mtolo Phiri has announced.
And Mr Phiri, the Minister of Agriculture has announced that the GMO mealie meal from South Africa would soon be in border towns as government has commenced the importation of the commodity.
Mr Phiri says the motive of importing mealie meal was to ensure that the border areas were flooded with mealie meal from South Africa to meet the demand.
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“The mealie meal coming from outside, will not find itself in our local stores like Choppies, Shoprite. The mealie meal is for the borders areas and we are taking mealie meal to border areas so that our colleagues coming from outside can afford to find the product, buy it and go back,” Mr Phiri said Mr. Phiri said government allowed for imports and suspended exports to protect and preserve the current maize strategic reserves.
Recently the Minister of Finance and National Planning Situmbeko Musokotwane signed a statutory instrument to suspend importation duty on mealie meal in an effort to stabilise mealie shortages the country has been experiencing for the past weeks
And Mr Phiri says the importation of GMO mealie meal from South Africa has commenced following the issuance of a Statutory Instrument to suspend import duty on the commodity. Mr Phiri told the media after inspecting the Food Reserve Agency (FRA) depots in Eastern Province that the importation process had commenced but could however not give the figure on how many import permits had been issues so far. Mr. Phiri said the government would only import between 15 and 20 metric tons of mealie meal because it wanted the importation of the commodity to be private sector driven.
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