HARARE - President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu PF Youth League yesterday unveiled an ambitious $2,4 billion revolving agricultural facility under a joint venture with Lasch Enterprises Pvt Ltd.
The project, which is on a guarantee-only basis, is targeting 800 000 farmers, with each farmer due to get $3 000 each in the first season.
Zanu PF is partnering First Mutual Life Assurance, Hamilton Insurance, Arda, CBZ, William Bain, Timb and Nico Orgo.
Evans Zininga, managing director of the joint venture, told the Daily News the project would offer contract farming and input disbursement with various partners in the deal.
“We will be catering for all farming sectors and age groups,” Zininga said.
“Government will issue a specific guarantee to the relevant bank and farmers can then approach the facility to be assisted. For projects that will require more than $10 000, the bank will need to see a proposal before financing the project.”
Zininga said the business venture would start rolling out the facilities next week and would be monitored weekly by technocrats in the relevant agricultural fields.
He said interest rates were at 10 percent, with repayment being seasonal, depending on the product being farmed.
Joseph Made, the minister of Agriculture, Mechanisation and
Irrigation Development said farmers should take advantage of the recent Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) ban in some European countries and export their products there.
He said farmers should be consistent in their farming so that they can exploit the international market with organic products.
Made also emphasised that he would be imposing import bans on all products deemed GMO, saying there is enough grain in the country.
“There are critical commodities we need to take note of particularly horticultural products which we use regularly as well as livestock such as poultry and piggery.
“There will be a process of review to make sure that we do not import these commodities as the first line of defence against GMOs,” Made said.
He said that his ministry would take stringent measures against import of anything GMO and would not let the country be contaminated.
Didymus Mutasa, minister of State in the President’s office, said it was high time land was utilised fully.
“All vacant and underutilised land should be made use of.
“We do not want to have to import maize from Zambia and South Africa when there are capable farmers here,” Mutasa said.