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Pamela Shumba, Senior Reporter 

GOVERNMENT yesterday announced new regulations banning private sales and requiring all maize to be sold to the Grain Marketing Board (GMB), in a move designed to control prices of mealie-meal.

The regulations, published under Statutory Instrument 145 of 2019, also ban the transportation of more than five bags of maize except when making deliveries to the GMB. 

According to the SI, the export of maize is now the preserve of the GMB and the police will be empowered to seize maize where breaches occur, with individuals falling foul of the new legal requirements facing up to two years in prison.

The SI gives the GMB the power to reject any maize delivered by a person other than a producer or a contractor.

A contractor is described as any person, company or entity that contracts a farmer to grow maize. “No person or statutory body or company or entity shall sell or otherwise acquire any maize from any farmer or producer other than through the GMB,” the regulations say.

“A person who acquires any maize for use as seed shall not use or dispose of that maize for any other purpose unless with written permission of the GMB.”

The SI also says only five bags of maize with a weight of 50kg or less each can be transported from one province to another, except when making a delivery to the GMB.

The Government sets prices for all maize delivered to the GMB, which is currently ZW$1, 400 per tonne.

The new regulations also say all farmers should deliver maize to the GMB, and millers  to buy from the GMB under conditions which would allow the Government to dictate the price of mealie-meal.

“With effect from the date of commencement of these regulations, no person other than the GMB shall export from Zimbabwe maize of any quantity or any description until such a date that shall be specified by the Minister of Lands, Agriculture, Water, Climate and Rural Resettlement Minister by way of notice in the gazette,” reads the SI.