The National Food Reserve Agency (NFRA) has told the Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture and Food Security that the Agency has no adequate stocks in its reserves.

NFRA Board Chairperson Dennis Kalekeni said this in Lilongwe during an interface with the Committee at Parliament Building.

According to Kalekeni, the Agency has 25, 000 metric tons in its Reserves against the required 217, 000 metric tons.

“The estimate that was provided in 2016 indicates that as NFRA we are supposed to keep an amount of maize worth 217, 000 metric tons.

But as we are talking we have about 62, 000 metric tons, part of the tons is still with Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation (ADMARC) and we are yet to collect it and therefore you can see that the gap is quite huge,” reported Kalekeni.

Kalekeni added that the K12 billion budgetary allocation the Agency received in 2021-2022 financial year is not enough as it is need of extra K20 billion to purchase maize.

He said: “If we procure maize with K12 billion, then we should have a shortfall of around K20 billion for us to procure maize that should reach up to 217, 000 metric tons so these are issues that we continue negotiating with Treasury and the line Ministry.”

Commenting on the development, the Committee’s Chairperson Sameer Suleman has described the situation as worrying considering that this year’s harvest is not enough.

“This is what we were saying, and today I am somehow relieved that the truth is coming out that as a country indeed we don’t have enough maize stocks.

“I think government has been given wrong information on an assumption that we would have high yields but looking at the figures that we have in our stocks, we are close to zero,” Suleman said.