The National Union for Small Scale Farmers in Zambia – NUSFAZ, which represents local farmers has appealed to government to recaptalise the Nitrogen Chemicals of Zambia (NCZ) or immediately facilitate the set up another local fertilizer manufacturing plant so that fertiliser can be produced locally at affordable prices.
Union Executive Director Ebony Loloji said one of the reasons Zambia has continued to import fertiliser is because it has no capacity to produce locally and the equipment at NCZ is obsolete, therefore the need to recaptalise the plant is urgent.
Speaking in an interview with the Zambian Business Times-ZBT, Loloji said places where Zambia is importing fertiliser from have modern plants which has made it easy for them to produce fertiliser efficiently.
Loloji mentioned that the fertiliser produced locally and the fertiliser that is imported is sold at the same price on the local market which is surprising, because importations come with extra costs such as transportation that local producers do not incur.
He said the fertiliser that is produced locally is supposed to be cheaper than the imported one but that is not the case on the local market. This is not right if we had modern plants that would manufacture fertilizer efficiently. Zambia has all the key and bulk raw materials.
“You will find that D Compound that is imported is K650 for a 50kg bag and the one from Nitrogen Chemicals of Zambia – NCZ is also K650. We need to recapitalize NCZ or set up other local manufacturing plants so that we can start producing fertiliser competitively”, he said.
Loloji has commended government for the early delivery of fertiliser under the Farmer Input Support Programme (FISP) as it will advantage farmers because when one plants early, the chances of maximising their yields are high.
He said two factors are considered in terms of maximising profit in agriculture production, these are increasing yield and better quality, adding that receiving inputs early and access to certified and high quality seeds means farmers will plant on time and the yields will be maximized.
The Bank of Zambia – BOZ recently revealed that importation of Agro inputs as well as fuel Imports made up the two biggest contributors to the recent Kwacha slide. Stakeholders have since called on government through the Industrial Developments Corporation – IDC to prioritize fixing this gapping annual forex outflow.
The forex bleeding initiated by the huge annual Agro import bill can be stopped by IDC spearheading either revamping NCZ or coming up with a new company to manufacture fertilizers and other Agro blends locally.
Experts have stated that this forex bleeding is the very reason why NCZ was set up in the first place, but successive governments neglected local manufacturing opting for the easy option of importing.
Experts say IDC also has the option of engaging and partnering with local fertilizer trading and blending company’s such as Export Trading Group – ETG to set up local manufacturing plants and exploit local sources of raw materials. This is expected to lead to stopping the forex bleeding, contribute to stabilizing the Kwacha as well as more securing jobs locally.
