If you are Malawian smallholder farmer waiting to buy cheap fertilizer and seeds from the Farm Input Subsidy Programme (FISP) please adjust your budget.
Malawian smallholder farmer should expect to deep more in the pocket as their cost of contribution towards the Farm Input Subsidy Programme (FISP) has gone up by 600% per each bag of fertilizer.
Previous years, each 50kg bag of fertilizer for FISP was costing K500, now Government has decided to put each bag of fertilizer at K3500 translating a total cost of K7000 (seven thousand kwacha) for Urea and NPK fertilizer bags.
That is not all, as 5kg packet of maize Seed will cost K1000 and for a packet of legume seed farmers will contribute K500.
Now, FISP beneficiaries should be spending K8,500 for the programme.
Minister of Agriculture, Irrigation and Water Development Hon. Allan Chiyembekeza announced the changes at Capital Hill in Lilongwe saying this follows reforms that government has taken in response to calls.
“This year, the programme beneficiaries will be contributing quite substantial amount of money” he said before announcing the new costs
“We as Government have been pushed left and right because everybody continued to say that we are spending too much money on the Farm Input Subsidy at the expense of other Government programmes which we understood and to some extent agreed” said Chiyembekeza.
He said; “So there was need for some kind of reforms in the Farm Input Subsidy Programme.”
Justifying the adjustments Chiyembekeza said “All this has been done in response to the outcry because this is what many people wanted including donors that at least we would want to make contribution of the farmer to be seen to be reasonable so that at least they can also feel that they are part of the programme”
Previous years, a farmer was contributing K500 (five hundred kwacha) for each fertilizer bag and it costs them K1000 (one thousand kwacha) for two bags. And for seed maize, it was K150 while legume seeds were given out for free because there was support from development partners on seed part. However this year the Minister revealed that “We still haven’t been assured whether there is going to be that support”
The Agriculture Minister also indicated that as part of reforms in the programme, the private sector will be involved in the supply, distribution and direct retail of some of the fertilizer earmarked for seven selected districts as pilot.
“We are doing this as a pilot because we don’t know whether it will work as people anticipate. So we don’t want to put all our eggs in one basket. If this proves to be more cost effective and more efficient than the system we have always used, definitely future farm input subsidy programmes will be used through this system” he said
But Chiyembekeza clarified that the remainder of the districts will follow the same old system where Smallholder Farmers Fertiliser Revolving Fund of Malawi (SFFRFM) and ADMARK will be markets for the FISP fertilizer.
He also hinted that procurement of fertilizer will be done by SFFRFM but evaluation for the bids of fertilizer which opened on 31st July 2015 will either be completed end of this week or early next week.
Honorable Chiyembekeza indicated that bids for transport will be done this Friday 7th August 2015.
However, the Minister said beneficiary identification will be done in due course by special identification system.
He said, government has registered already all farmers across the country that grow maize with land holding capacity of 5 hectares maximum. He said the 1. 5 million beneficiaries will be devided by the total number of maize farmers then the given percentage is going to be applied to all villages. He added from such system chiefs will not identify the beneficiarys and that those that will benefit this year will be removed from the system to pave way for other farmers. He said this system will remove issues of favouritism during identification of beneficiaries.
FISP will clock 11 years since its implementation, with an aim of achieving food self sufficiency and increased income of resource poor farmers through increased maize and legume production.
The 2015/2016 budget allocated K41.5 billion for the programme targeting 1.5 million beneficiaries. From the budget, Government will procure and subsidize 150 thousand metric tonnes of fertilizer where; 75 thousand metric tonnes will be for NPK fertilizer and another 75 thousand metric tonnes of fertiliser will be for Urea.
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