Businesses protest against increase in soya prices
Cooking oil and poultry investors have asked government to reduce soya beans farm gate prices, saying the price of K800 per kilogramme (kg) will push up prices of locally produced cooking oil and poultry products.
In an interview on Monday, Poultry Association of Malawi technical adviser Eric Chuma confirmed meeting Ministry of Agriculture officials last Tuesday to, among others, discuss current farm gate prices of soya beans and maize.
He said their concerns were that the K800 per kg farm price of soya beans, an increase from last season’s K500 per kg, has affected feed producers’ capacity as it has raised operational costs.
Chuma said: “We told the Principal Secretary for Agriculture [Dixie Kampani] that the government imposed prices without consulting us as main users of soya beans.
“As such, the move will slow down the poultry industry which contributes six percent of the country’s gross domestic product [GDP] through exports of dressed chicken, table eggs and chicken feed.”
In a separate interview, another local investor Atusaye Kajanga Mwafulirwa said he has since suspended oil production at his Kajanga Cooking Oil Plant manufacturing plant in Kasungu.
He said: “With the soya beans almost doubling in price, my dream of resuming production remains shaky. My worry is that this will greatly affect the country’s economy, considering our contribution as the cooking oil industry.
“I really wish government would consider this because it will have a huge impact on cooking oil prices but also affect the Malawi 2063 Agenda of turning the country from a producing to exporting economy.”
Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture chairperson Sameer Suleman said he recently expressed the same concerns to Minister of Agriculture Sam Kawale to reconsider the soya beans price.
“The problem is that the government imposed farm gate prices on others since it has no market for the farmers produce, and it did that without consulting main users of soya beans,” he said.
A recent visit by The Nation to Mchinji and Lilongwe districts found scores of illegal vendors buying soya beans at prices ranging from K350 to K450 per kg
