After producing its largest harvest on record, Zambia will export 850,000 tons of maize to neighboring countries including Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Malawi, Angola and Kenya.
According to the Secretary of the Zambian Food Reserve Agency (FRA) Martha Nalubamba, the agency plans to sell maize and rice on the local market between November 2014 and October 2015 via allocations to a number of purchase categories.
“The sale is in order to create space, properly handle, rotate, distribute and position designated commodities to various parts of the country as part of the national food reserve,” she said in a recently released statement.
Reports from the Zambian Minister of Agriculture Wylbur Simuusa indicate that Zambia has purchased more than twice the required strategic reserve of 500,000 tons of maize with additional stocks available for export.
“We have 350,000 tons from carry-over stocks and the additional 500,000 tons we bought above our requirements this year which we plan to export,” he said, “We have firm orders for the maize in our neighboring countries and decided to buy more than our strategic reserves because the private sector was offering very low prices to our farmers.”
