Frank Phiri
11 April 2005
Blantyre — Around two million Malawians need food aid this year, the sixth year in a row that food shortages have hit the country, due to a prolonged drought affecting the greater part of Southern Africa.
But analysts blame policy failure as playing a major role in turning hunger into a perennial plague for millions of Malawi's poor.
This year's food shortage has reduced between 1.3 million and 1.7 million Malawians to relief aid, according to preliminary joint Crop and Food Supply Assessments (CFSAM) by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
In Southern Africa, the UN agencies' assessments indicate that Malawi, Lesotho, Botswana and Swaziland are the hardest hit by food shortages.
The threat of food shortage remains real in the rest of the region with Zambia, Zimbabwe and Angola facing scarcities in some areas due to the ramifications of dry spells and floods.
At a meeting to discuss food supply assessments for Southern Africa for the 2004/05 agricultural season in Johannesburg last June, the UN Regional Interagency Coordination and Support Office ruled out a joint relief effort for the 13-nation Southern African Community Development (SADC). It said this season's scarcity did not present itself as a regional crisis, "and that there would be no consolidated regional appeal".
The UN Regional Interagency Coordination and Support Office coordinates Crop and Food Supply Assessments conducted by governments and aid agencies in the region.
The joint FAO/WFP 2004/05 assessment report says Malawi, Lesotho, Swaziland and Botswana would import 271,300 metric tonnes of maize.
According to the report, the remainder of 134,000 metric tonnes has not yet been pledged. But indications are that Mozambique, which is expected to harvest a surplus crop, would export about 70,000 metric tonnes.
As of November 2004, WFP had started emergency relief operations in Malawi, but the future of these operations is uncertain as the country's strategic grain reserves are reported to have been depleted.
According to the country's Food Balance Sheet - a summary, which determines food availability at national level - 60,000 metric tonnes meant for relief and seed for the 2005/06 agricultural season has been depleted from the reserves, of which WFP has distributed 27,000 metric tonnes.
WFP official Antonella D'aprile says the agency's food distribution efforts were based on recommendations of the Malawi Vulnerability Assessment Committee (MVAC) comprising government and aid agencies.
D'aprile says the WFP is expected to re-adjust its food distribution operations from April to June based on deficit figures expected to be released by the joint assessment committee.
Government statistics indicate that Malawi has once again failed to attain its national food requirement of 2.2 million tonnes of the staple grain, maize.
The figures indicate that for the 2004/05 agricultural season, the country expects to harvest 1.3 million tonnes, a deficit wider than the initial 10 percent estimated by aid agencies.
This is the sixth year Malawi has recorded food production deficits, according to MVAC estimates. The last time the country was able to attain sufficient production levels for maize was in 1998 and 1999.
As rainfall patterns are hardly reliable in the region, analysts are looking beyond bad weather, and pointing to poor implementation of government policies as the main cause of food production lapses in the last five years.
"The food crises for a country like Malawi have now gone beyond drought as a cause. Known factors are contributing to hunger much more than we can blame it on drought," Paul Kwengwere, Programme Development Manager for an international charity, ActionAid, told IPS.
In the 2004/05 budget, the government put aside about 24 million dollars for a fertiliser subsidy scheme in the hope of boosting food security.
The subsidy was meant to benefit two million poor households, but its implementation was hit by delays that led to most of the targeted subsistence farmers either receiving the fertiliser very late or not at all.
"One of the reasons for hunger this year is the slow action by government with the fertiliser subsidy, and possibly mis-targeting. I hope lessons will be learnt fast because the beginning of the next agricultural season is approaching," Kwengwere said.
John Kapito, executive director of the Consumers Association of Malawi, a Blantyre-based consumer rights watchdog, agrees.
"The targeting was wrong; the old and very poor who received the fertiliser were either too weak to apply it or ended up selling it to get quick cash for buying food," he said.
Government, which says it decided to re-visit subsidies on a test basis, admits that the delay to distribute the fertiliser has produced bad results.
"The effectiveness of last year's subsidy was compromised because we started late," said Finance Minister Goodall Gondwe.
He attributed the delay to shifting of the budget session of Parliament from July to September 2004 due to the country's general elections in May. Malawi's fiscal year had traditionally started Jul. 1.
Malawi phased out subsidies in 1996, on the advice of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.
The Brettonwoods institutions were behind the phased removal of subsidies in a number of sub-Saharan African countries between the 1980s and 1990s because they deemed them wasteful and therefore destructive to ailing economies of the region.
"We're going ahead with another subsidy this year. We'll find another formula to beat last year's problems," Gondwe said, but would not provide figures.
Economic analysts say the need to import food could plunge the economy into deeper problems if not handled carefully.
Sean O'Neal of First Merchant Bank says immediate food imports could raise extra-budgetary spending, which was likely to put off international donors from resuming aid.
The donors, led by the IMF have pledged to resume aid on condition that government stays on track with its budget implementation. The IMF suspended lending to Malawi in 2004, citing corruption and pre-election over-expenditure.
"The government now finds itself between a rock and hard place. Failure to take decisive action on the food crisis would have dire consequences," O'Neal said. "They (donors) want to be sure how government will handle the situation as it has a bad record on food management."
Apart from the touchy issue of donors, Malawi does not have enough foreign currency reserves to import food supplies. The Reserve Bank of Malawi says the country's reserves are running at their lowest at 1.8 months of import cover or 119.8 million dollars.
Malawi requires up to three months of import cover to service bills for all its import needs.
Due to the decline in foreign currency reserves, the local currency, kwacha, has lost its 18 months stability against the dollar and other major trading currencies such as the British Pound, Euro and Rand.
With inflation already running high at 14 percent, courtesy of declining food supplies, economic commentators predict that the depreciation of the kwacha will have the effect of importing higher inflation into Malawi.
Food accounts for the greatest bulk at 58 percent in the Consumer Price Index (CPI)- the basket of prices used to calculate inflation.
"Higher than expected food inflation and to a lesser extent, rising non-food inflationary pressure has resulted in the higher overall inflation," said the Johannesburg-based Standard Bank Group in a monthly Market Report for Malawi released last week.
Finance Minister Gondwe told IPS that government was still negotiating for prices of the maize it requires to import, and would only be in a position to pay for it when the 2005/06 budget is approved in Parliament either in June or July.
"Currently food distribution to most affected areas is going on with funding from the European Union. We're waiting for final estimates on the deficit which we'll apply to determine how much money will be needed from the budget to import food," Gondwe said.
In a situation report, the MVAC said that as of end-December, the government, with assistance from donors, had managed to replenish the strategic grain reserves with 58,000 metric tonnes out of the required 60,000 metric tonnes of maize.
This comprised a 32,000-metric tonne from government and 28,000 metric tonnes contributed by the European Union.
"However the procurement of the 70,000 metric tonnes by government for sale to the general public started late (around October 2004), and, as a result, only about 22,000 metric tonnes had been delivered by the end of December," said the joint assessment committee.
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