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Staple
foods limited, cost of living rising
Famine Early
Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET)
October 12, 2005
http://www.fews.net/alerts/?pageID=alertDoc&g=1000811&f=zw&level=eme
The levels of food
insecurity continue to worsen for both urban and rural populations, due
to the reduced availability of staple cereals and the ever rising cost
of living.
Household food stocks
are running low as the hunger season (September _ January) is starting.
More people are being forced to look for maize and maize meal on the market.
While tremendous effort is being made by the government to import food
into the country to cover the production gap, officially estimated at
about 1.2 million MT of maize, in-country grain distribution problems
arising from shortages of fuel and trucks are restricting the amount of
grain available on the market, particularly in the remote parts of the
country. At current importation rates, the government will manage to import
about 80 percent of its targeted maize imports of 1.2 million MT. If the
pledges from government cooperating partners to bring 300,000 MT of grain
into the country in the current marketing year materialize, the national
deficit will be closed.
Since the harvesting
period (around May), informal maize trade prices have increased significantly
in response to both inflation and reduced availability. The traditionally
grain deficit southern districts had the highest informal market maize
price increases. Here, maize prices had gone up by at least 50 percent
by August 2005. Maize availability in these areas is at critical levels;
even people with money are finding it difficult to buy maize or maize
meal. Private traders and local shops in these areas are now taking advantage
of the situation and asking for between Z$4,400 and Z$5,600/kg for maize
grain.
On the other hand,
maize price increases were as low as 25 percent in the north central districts
of Mashonaland provinces and Manicaland were local production was the
dominant source of maize grain. Farmer to farmer to maize transactions
were taking place at between Z$2,200 and Z$2800/kg in these areas.
The hyper inflation
charactering the Zimbabwean economy continues to push the cost of living
beyond the reach of most households. The gains that had been made in the
fight against inflation throughout 2004 and the first quarter of 2005
continue to be reversed. The Central Statistical Office (CSO) measured
an annual rate of inflation that stood at the unprecedented level of 623
percent in January 2004, but had gone down to 124 percent in March 2005.
Since then inflation has risen sharply to 360 percent in September 2005.
In July alone general prices levels leapt by a massive 47 percent. Though
the month on month inflation for August went down to 8.3 percent, the
September rate shot up to 33.3 percent as result of the official depreciation
of the Zimbabwe dollar against major currencies, fuel price hikes and
increases in value added tax take in August and September. The International
Monetary Fund's 2005 economic review for Zimbabwe forecast annual inflation
rate of 400 percent by December 2005. The Consumer Council of Zimbabwe
(CCZ) monitored monthly food and non-food basket for low-income urban
households of six stood at Z$5,401,440 in July 2005, marking an increase
of 27 percent from June 2005 level of Z$4,247,808. By mid August 2005
the cost of the same basket had moved up by about 13.5 percent to reach
the record high level of Z$6,129,900. At the end of September the cost
of the CCZ basket had soured to Z$9.6million. Not only do consumers have
to contend with exorbitant prices of basic commodities and services but
they also have to grapple with rampant shortages of basic food stuffs
such as salt, sugar, cooking oil and flour.
Given all these challenges
the number of food insecure people is already substantially higher than
the Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee's (ZimVAC) estimate of
1.5 million food insecure rural people from July to September 2005. The
urgent need to update the ZimVac projections of food insecure people can,
therefore, not be overemphasized as affected populations require immediate
food assistance to survive the hunger season.
Poor preparations
for the 2005/06 Agricultural season lend little confidence to Zimbabwe's
prospects for coming out of the current food security crisis in the next
marketing year.
Climate experts predict
that Zimbabwe's cereal crop producing region has greater chances of good
rainfall in the 2005/06 cropping season. However, Zimbabwean farmers may
not be able to take advantage of the potentially good rainfall season
because of serious shortages of critical inputs. Maize seed, fertilizers,
fuel and spare parts for farm machinery are likely to be in serious short
supply in the 2005/06 cropping season. Seed companies in Zimbabwe estimate
that as of August 2005, they held in stock a total of 26,000 MT of maize
seed. Prior to 2000, Zimbabwe used to use about 36,000 MT of maize seed
and produce enough to feed the nation and export some maize to other countries.
Assuming national maize yields will approximate those attained by communal
farmers in the 1990s and the national maize grain requirements are about
2 million MT, close to 56,000 MT of maize seed will be required in the
2005/06 agricultural season. The fertilizer companies told the a parliamentary
committee in early August that they had no fertilizer stocks, and hardily
any production of the commodity was taking place because of lack of foreign
currency to import the required raw materials. In the 1990s Zimbabwean
farmers would use an average of about 400,000 MT of fertilizers, about
40 percent of which was used for the maize crop. National fertilizer production
capacity cannot meet this demand in the time left even if adequate foreign
currency is made available to import the critical inputs. Furthermore,
it is highly unlikely that adequate foreign currency to import the required
fertilizers could be secured if none could be availed for the raw materials.
For more information
see the FEWS NET Zimbabwe Country Center at: http://www.fews.net/zimbabwe
Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.
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