President Lazurus Chakwera has told youths in Mzuzu City that the government is putting up measures to gradually phase out the Affordable Inputs Programme (AIP).
Speaking at the ‘State of the National Address (Sona) for the Youth’ event in Mzuzu City Tuesday, Chakwera said the government had for a long time invested in subsistence farming through the subsidy programme.
He observed that despite huge investments made into the initiative, hunger remained a problem.
Chakwera said the government was now looking at agriculture commercialisation and mechanisation, through the Mega Farms initiative, among other activities.
“Actually, the plan is to phase out this programme. We are doing it in stages deliberately so that mechanisation and commercialisation of agriculture should be paramount. And how do we do that? I said this in Parliament that no country can ever feed itself through subsistence farming; we have to go to this next stage. We want more people to mechanise and use tractors and not hoes,” he said.
Chakwera said recent reductions in the number of beneficiaries was a move in that direction.
“That is why I am deliberately moving away from the programme and you can see for yourselves the number of beneficiaries; we are phasing out…
“If you see Agriculture Commercialisation (Agcom), both one and two, and what we are funding [you will realise that]. Now we are encouraging the private sector [to participate in activities]. For example, Pixus is a company that is doing wonderful work in the country. When we engaged the company, they developed different varieties of wheat seed, which can be grown anywhere in the country. Now we are looking at the private sector to get involved in this,” he said.
Commenting on this, government spokesperson Moses Kunkuyu said some of the people who were benefiting from AIP were being roped in through other interventions such as the Mega Farms initiative.
“The programme has been under review and you would see from the first year we adopted the programme [that] we had over three million people. Now we are talking about a number slightly above a million. So, the people that are productive are being put in other programmes like the Mega Farms initiative and Agcom so that they can commercialise,” he said.
Chakwera also addressed the issue of forex scarcity and bureaucracy in government agencies and departments, among others.
He also said the government was awaiting a nod from the International Air Transport Association (IATA) to certify Mzuzu International Airport to start receiving bigger airplanes.
On the construction of the new Mzuzu Airport, Chakwera said they were in talks with the private sector for a Build-Operate-Transfer arrangement.
Similar engagements with the youth were done in Lilongwe and Blantyre.
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