FISP HITCHES RISK TO GOOD YIELD

By MAILESI BANDA GOVERNMENT is concerned over the delays in the distribution of the farming inputs, saying it is a risk for low crop production.

Agriculture Minister Dora Siliya said the delays in the distribution of the inputs, would result in low crop production.

However, she said about 400, 000 out of the one million farmers had so far registered for the FISP programme and paid the K400 counterpart deposit.

This follows complaints from farmers that they have not been given inputs even after making their counterpart deposits of K400.

This prompted Ms Siliya and her Ministry of Finance counterpart Felix Mutati to summon the heads of financial services at Ministry of Finance in Lusaka yesterday to find a solution to the problem.

The two ministers took heads of financial services to task demanding for an explanation to the delays in dispatching the inputs.

“This meeting has been called so that we can make it easy for Government to make the funding and for the farmer to make the counterpart deposit without any challenges thereby making it easy for the farmer to access inputs,” she said.

She explained that the Ministry of Agriculture had been monitoring the activities of the FISP programme and that they had discovered recurring challenges which she said need to be addressed by the stakeholders meeting.

Ms Siliya noted that attending to these challenges in time was important as if left unchecked, they would affect national food security.

Mr Mutati said the performance of the FISP distribution was not impressive so far.

Mr. Mutati said the distribution was slow, adding that the aim of the meeting was not to blame the financial institutions or the government but rather to come up with a solution to the problem. He said it was important for the matters to be addressed soon as farmers were running out of time.