In a letter seen by this reporter, Musarara said, “The current prize to retailers of ZWD63/10KG by millers must hold for now so that the retail prize remain at ZWD70/10KG. Government subsidy to millers be ZWD85/10KG.”
Musarara’s intervention comes at a time when the Zimbabwe dollar has lost value and trading at ZWL41.2 against USD1.
The crash of the Zim dollar has caused most of the prices of commodities in shops to skyrocket, a situation that will bite ordinary Zimbabweans.
Maize meal is Zimbabwe’s staple food.
Recently South Africa’s Prophet Shepherd Bushiri announced that he will be supplying maize to GMAZ as a means of assisting the government of Zimbabwe to deal with maize shortages.
Musarara recently appeared in front of the parliamentary portfolio committee on agriculture where he gave oral evidence on the purchasing and supply of grain by GMAZ.
The meeting was attended by millers like National Foods and Blue Ribbon who corroborated the evidence given by Musarara.
The portfolio committee is chaired by Gokwe-Nembudziya Member of parliament Mayor Justice Wadyajena.
Responding to Wadyajena during the hearing, the National Foods group chief executive officer, Mike Lashbrook said that the relationship with GMAZ was helping millers in lobbying to get good terms from Government for their business.
Bakhresa group of companies the new owners of Blue Ribbon Foods’ general manager, Yusuf Kamau, also told Wadyajena that the imported wheat was equitably distributed by the association to all wheat millers.
“We had several meetings as GMAZ members where we agreed that GMAZ as an association acquires the grain on behalf of all of us because our foreign suppliers had refused to supply us because we owe them.
“The imported grain was allocated to us by the whole GMAZ committee made up of all wheat millers themselves those are the ones who allocate the wheat, and the allocations were and are done in accordance with one’s milling capacity and we had no problems with that,” said Kamau.
