Farmers in the country have described the introduction of duty free exports of agricultural exports to China as a positive development.

According to Farmers Union of Malawi (FUM) President Frighton Njolomole, the agreement will play critical role in boosting the country’s agricultural sector.

He said: “Definitely the farmers are excitingly very happy because we know now that after working hard in our fields and after harvesting we won’t have lots of problems.

Because we will start exporting and it’s going to be free, that is a very good thing.”

Signing the agreement earlier this week in Lilongwe, Chinese Ambassador to Malawi – Long Zhou said the deal aims at cementing partnership of the two countries.

Njolomole has however appealed to authorities to equip the farmers with various skills especially on value addition.

“It’s actually a big challenge but people can learn, whatever they Chinese people want to see from us when we are exporting, definitely people come in and teach the farmers how to do packaging and how to look after their products before they actually export.

Definitely, that cannot be something very difficult, the government can even come in and assist the farmers as much as they can so that the farmers will be able to export whichever products they want to export,” appealed Njolomole.

According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), soybean is in great demand both for the production of protein-rich meals as well as for livestock feed. Genetically modified organism-free soybean from Malawi already earns a premium in export markets.

UNCTAD further observes that potential export earnings from groundnuts, grown by poor communities throughout Malawi, are estimated at around US$48.4 million, of which over half is as yet unrealised.