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Deputy Minister Davis Marapira

Prince Sunduzani, Chronicle Reporter
ZIMBABWE is losing $200 million through soya beans imports per year, thereby depriving the country of foreign currency that can be put to other pressing needs.

In an interview yesterday, Deputy Minister of Agriculture, Mechanisation and Irrigation Development responsible for cropping, Davis Marapira said Government will give 10kgs of soyabean seed to each farmer who will benefit from the Presidential Inputs Scheme so that the country does not lose money on imports.

He said Government wants to stop importing soya beans, hence the support for farmers.

“We no longer want to import soya beans.  We want to produce and export soya beans and generate our own foreign currency,” said Deputy Minister Marapira.

“We are losing over $200 million per year on soya beans alone, as we import over $200 million worth of soya beans which is very bad.”

He said the money which is going towards soya bean imports could be used to buy agriculture machinery that can help improve the performance of the agricultural sector.

“If the $200 million is used to buy tractors and inputs which will be given to our farmers that will help our agricultural turnover and probably grow our economy by an extra 10 percent,” he said.

Soya beans is used for production of basic commodities such as cooking oil.

The importation of the raw material increases production costs.

In August, Oil Expressers’ Association of Zimbabwe (OEAZ) president Mr Busisa Moyo said there was a need to boost soya beans production to reduce production costs.

“We have to produce our own soya beans at a very efficient cost to reduce the imports,” he said.

Zimbabwean farmers produce an average of 30 000 tonnes of soya bean per year, against demand of about 300 000 tonnes. Some local cooking oil producers have started contracting local growers to increase soya beans production to reduce reliance on imports.

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