‘Cheap edible oil imports killing local industry’

THE National Union for Small-scale Farmers of Zambia (NUSFAZ) is saddened that Government has allowed the importation of crude palm oil, palm alien and palm staring.

NUSFAZ president Frank Kayula said the move was a blow to the agriculture sector, in particular to soya bean value chain.

He was speaking in an interview with the Daily Nation at the weekend.

“The soya bean value chain will not depend on the production that is coming from small-scale farmers or even large scale farmers because basically what will happen is that very few companies will be purchasing soya bean for cooking oil or maybe even groundnuts,” Dr Kayula said

Dr Kayula said the companies that were able to process palm oil to finished cooking oil would go under.

buy soya beans such as Global Industries were not doing so because of the same problem of cheap imports.

“We are very saddened and we are appealing to the government to reconsider because soya beans is one of the value chain in which the small scale farmers can actually make a lot of money.

“So if we say we will depend on the imported products, then we are killing our own soya bean value chain in this country,” Dr Kayula says

He said he was aware that at the moment Mt Meru and COMACO were buying soya beans but they were do not getting large quantities from the farmers.

Dr Kayula hoped that Government would reconsider the current position on cheap imports in order to boost the local industry.