Economic Stability to Continue

26 April 2011

ZAMBIA’s current national food security and this year’s expected high yields will help maintain economic stability and low inflation rate despite the reported worldwide food deficit, Agriculture and Cooperatives Minister Eustarckio Kazonga has said.

Dr Kazonga said Zambia had secured food for the main crops as well as seed for the next planting season, and the current food deficit across the world would not affect the country economically.

He said the crop survey team was presently reassessing the expected maize harvest while wheat stocks were enough.

“There is no need to worry about the world food deficit or rising inflation because Zambia has secured food already, seed for the next planting season in the fields but we are going to have enough food and seed for the next season,” he said.

The world has lately experienced a food deficit which has been instigated by the happening in Russia, the world’s largest wheat producer where about 75 per cent of the crop was damaged by floods and wild fires.

Russia, which exports across the world, has banned exports of wheat and the current political turmoil affecting the Arab world has been linked to the food deficit.

But Dr Kazonga said Zambia had even reached a level where it could export the major crops, adding that this could help the country earn the much-needed foreign currency, thereby keeping inflation low when it was rising across the world.

Dr Kazonga said apart Zambia recording maize and wheat bumper harvests, it was also showing an increase in harvest of other crops, which was good for the growth of the economy as it helped economic diversification.

Zambia’s maize production had in the last three years been on the increase from 1.2 million tonnes in 2008 to 1.8 million tonnes in 2009 and then 2.8 million tonnes in the 2010 farming seasons.

He said Irish potato harvest had risen by eight per cent from 2009 to the 2010 season which recorded 22 940 tonnes while sweet potatoes had increased by 26 per cent with beans rising by 40 per cent in the same period.

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