Written by Robert Zingani
Although the financial plan has been panel beated by growing covid expenditures and poor performance of revenue as a firms continue to suffer with second wave of the pandemic,the country now is smiling due to well implemented initiative called Affordable Inputs Programme (AIP) which is the brain child of His Excellency The State president Reverend Lazarous Chakwera administration.
According to Agriculture Minister Robin Lowe the (AIP) had performed to the best and the government saved about k20 billion due to the sieving process,which removed some bogus beneficiaries from the list of deserving farming families. “In my previous presentation in this August House (Parliament),I indicated that the AIP would target 4,279,100 farming households. However when the list of farmers was validated by the National Bereau, the number of farming households was reduced to 3,788,105.
” The drop was due to several factors including deaths, duplications and fake households, just mention a few” Lowe said.
According to him,the cost of the subsidy programme went down from k160.2 billion to k140.2 billion following the cleaning up of the system. Lowe told the House that government expected a bumper maize output ,this year following the successful rollout of the initiative.
Almost every member of Parliament did not hide their joy and how the minister Lowe performed one of the them was chairperson of agriculture committee of Parliament Sameer Suleiman who go further to appeal the President not to remove Lowe as agriculture minister as a country is expecting reshuffling of cabinet as promised by the President of Malawi.
“Lowe is available minister and was able to assist lawmakers regardless which political party their belong” Suleiman said .
During the state visit of Botswana president to Malawi His Excellency Doctor mokgweetsi Eric keabetswe Masisi agreed on how the ministry of agriculture in Malawi performed tremendously and openly said to the public that he is impressed and his country is going to provide markets to Malawi agricultural products.
Lobin Lowe was once served as acting leader of opposition when Malawi Congress party was then main opposition party in Malawi in early 2020
The Express News
