The Minister of Agriculture, Honourable Sam Dalitso Kawale, has informed that the 2023/2024 agriculture season will run smooth free from delayed supply hiccups that were experienced during the 2022/2023 planting season.
Kawale has highlighted that this years supplied need of about 150,000 metric tons have already started trickling in the country with about 53 per cent of the quantities already in the country at the moment:
“Your Ministry of Agriculture wishes to inform you that it has awarded contracts to thirteen (13) fertilizer suppliers who are expected to supply 149,164 metric tons of NPK and Urea fertilizer through SFFRFM”, he says adding that from among these companies “about 80,000 metric tons of the fertilizer is already in the country, which is 53% of what we need. The balance will be in the country before we launch the program.”
According to Kawale, procurement of transportation services is at advanced stage and award of such contracts to successful transporters is expected to be given by 31st July, 2023 with an expected that smallholder farmers will access all farm inputs before the first planting rains.
The Agriculture Inputs Program (AIP) is one of the extensive programs that reaches out to millions of Malawian farmers situated at a disadvantage from the global sky-rocketing prices of fertilizer, prompting the Government to come in with resources to subsidize the commodity to allow access for smallholder farmers of limited means.
The Chakwera administration entered the scene with a bag of commitments of which the AIP program is the most towering and highly considered. The program has enabled the agriculture-dependent nation to achieve relative food stability in the country.
