The Chaos of Fertiliser Procurement Continues
By Amb. Emmanuel Mwamba
The procurement of fertiliser in the last two farming seasons has been met with chaos and corruption due to heavy State House interference.
This year, the chaos started with the procurement process of the 120,380 metric tonnes of D Compound fertiliser.
This tender was not subjected to competition and President Hakainde Hichilema justified the single-sourcing method undetaken as ‘Positive Discrimination’ for the local industry.
Therefore the contract to supply, warehouse and distribute Compound D (basal Fertiliser) concluded in May, 2023 by way of direct bidding.
Two suppliers were shortlisted and awarded contracts to deliver the D Compound fertiliser. These were United Capital Fertilizer Zambia Company Limited and Nitrogen Chemicals of Zambia.
But another local manufacturer was excluded.
For Urea or top dressing, public tenders has been cancelled.
Recently Government announced that it had cancelled the tender published by Zambia Public Procurement Authority e-government procurement process and had proceeded to shortlist 13 companies under direct bidding method.
These 13 shortlisted companies were; Bestmed, Kovenant, Greenfield,Growmax Federal, Agrizam, Alpha Commodities, ETG, Agrotrade, Portland, Midwest,Taimwima and
Doron.
As usual and due to State House interference, this contract has also been reportedly cancelled as companies that they favour were not succesful!
For the 2023/2024 FISP, Government is expected to spend K7,152,481,292.47 ( about $350 million).
Of this amount, K1,549,273,497.68 will go towards the implementation of the e-Voucher system while, of course, K5,603,207,794.80 will be for the direct input supply modality.
CONCLUSION
Clearly, with the bungling of the procurement process, the fertiliser will not be purchased and disyributed on time and food insecurity will continue to persist way into 2024-2025.
Clearly the 2023/2024 farming season will be affected and the harvest will be low because of this chaos and corruption in the procurement process.
Further it has been announced that Zambia will be affected by the El Niño weather phenomenon with record heat temperatures and droughts in the rainfall regions.
Note; Image, those that supplied the fertiliser last year.
