FISP impact on rural poverty reduction questioned

The Indaba Agricultural Policy Research Institute (IAPRI) has observed that though the Farmer Inputs Support Programme (FISP) and the Food Reserve Agency (FRA) get a big share of the allocations in the national budgets, their contribution to sustained growth and rural poverty reduction is unclear.

In a presentation during a stakeholders’ breakfast meeting to discuss the 2016 national budget pertaining to agriculture in Lusaka today, IAPRI Researcher Auckland Kuteya says there has been too much emphasis on FRA and FISP in national budgets because the two programs have immediate political payoffs as well as visible support to constituencies.

Mr. Kuteya says there is need to redirect funding from the FRA and FISP to key drivers of agricultural growth among them irrigation, extension services, livestock production and disease control, rural infrastructure among others.

He adds that there is also need to limit FRA’s participation in maize marketing, increase funding for livestock and fisheries and improve timing of budget releases.

And Mr. Kuteya says the recently launched e-voucher system will promote agricultural diversification, provide small scale farmers with a wider choice of inputs, and increase private sector participation in input market among other benefits.

And at the same event, Agriculture Minister Given Lubinda has assured that government will take into consideration what stakeholders are suggesting.

Mr. Lubinda however, says a study has shown that FISP has contributed to maize production, stating that before FISP was introduced, the country was not able to talk about bumper harvests which are being recorded.

And Mr. Lubinda says the country is exporting this year’s maize not because it produced it efficiently but because the country produced it when other countries did not.

He says this is why the prices have gone up due to the artificial demand that has been created.

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