Govt cleaning up agro system – Northwest PS

GOVERNMENT is working to eliminate hurdles in agriculture in to reposition the sectors as a priority, North-western Province Permanent Secretary Willies Mangimela has said.

Mr Mangimela said the Government was committed to ensuring that agriculture was set as the engine for economic diversification and job creation.

He said this was why Government was eliminating challenges encountered during the implementation of the Farmer Input Support Programme (FISP) to enhance the efficiency.

He was speaking during the provincial FISP review meeting for the 2018-2019 agriculture season in Solwezi yesterday.

He said some of the notable challenges encountered during the implementation phase were low stocking of inputs by agricultural dealers, low participation of national suppliers on the electronic voucher system and failure to distinguish between e-voucher and direct supply system by various stakeholders.

The other challenge, he said, was poor transaction records between the Government and the agro dealers.

“I therefore direct that this meeting must interrogate the challenges encountered during the programme implementation and make strong recommendations to enhance efficiency of the programme,” Mr Mangimela said. He a also said 62, 276 farmers were targeted to access farm inputs during the 2018-2019 farming season in North-Western Province.

“During implementation, 38, 788 farmers were on the electronic voucher system and 23, 488 were on the direct input supply system,” he said.

Mr Mangimela said 99 percent of farmers on the direct input supply system accessed the farm inputs while 95 percent of farmers on the electronic voucher system managed to redeem their inputs, giving an average performance of 97 percent for the province.

“From the above statistics, the programme has been a huge success especially when compared to the previous season,” he said.