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Zimbabwe bakery shuts outlet, bread crisis worsens
Cris Chinaka, Reuters
September 05, 2007

http://africa.reuters.com/wire/news/usnL05860566.html

HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's main bakery said on Wednesday bread shortages would worsen after it shut one of its largest outlets due to a shortage of wheat.

The move followed the government's recent admission that it could not afford to pay for wheat from Mozambique.

President Robert Mugabe's government, presiding over a deepening economic crisis with runaway inflation and chronic shortages of food and fuel, had planned to buy 36,000 tonnes of wheat from its neighbour to ease the bread crunch.

Lobels Bread, the country's major bread producer, has only two days' supply of wheat and has had to cut daily production to 40,000 loaves from 200,000 loaves in May, Lemmy Chikomo, the firm's operations director, told state media.

Chikomo said Lobels had shut its bakery in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second largest city, on Aug. 25 and had sent home hundreds of workers at its main factory in the capital Harare.

"Flour availability has deteriorated, and this has forced us to use our strategic stocks since May. Now we are only left with two days' supply," he said.

Officials from the state-owned Grain Marketing Board (GMB), which is responsible for managing national wheat and maize stocks, were not immediately available for comment.

Critics accuse Mugabe, in power since independence from Britain in 1980, of mismanaging the economy and destroying the agricultural sector through his government's seizure of white-owned commercial farms.

The seizures, which began in 2000, saw some of the country's most fertile land handed over to blacks without farming skills and led to a sharp drop in agricultural production in a country that once exported food to other parts of Africa.

Price freeze

The situation has worsened in the past three months as the government imposed a price freeze on many consumer items to try to control inflation, currently above 7,600 percent.

The policy, however, has led many stores to stop restocking basic foodstuffs and other items and forced others, including private bakers, to shut their doors rather than continue selling their products at a loss.

Chikomo said Lobels Bread has been unprofitable since May and had accrued huge debts to keep paying its workers.

Meanwhile, a consignment of wheat was stuck at the Mozambican port in Beira because of an unpaid bill to an international grain supplier, the state-owned Sunday Mail newspaper reported on Sunday, citing Zimbabwe National Security Minister Didymus Mutasa.The report did not mention the amount of money involved or name the grain supplier who was owed money.

Mutasa, who heads a government committee responsible for food procurement and distribution, has not commented further on the crisis, which he and other Mugabe officials blame on Western sabotage and sanctions.

Agricultural experts say Zimbabwe's farmers will probably produce less than 80,000 tonnes of wheat in the October harvest. The country normally needs 450,000 tonnes each year.

In June the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation and World Food Programme said more than 4 million Zimbabweans, or about a third of the population, would need food aid this year, mostly in the form of the staple maize meal.

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