Mealie meal deal between Zambia, DRC fails to take off

A MEALIE meal deal between Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) yesterday failed to take place after Minister of Agriculture, Dora Siliya, and her permanent secretary Julius Shawa failed to ink the memorandum of understanding (MoU) in unclear circumstances.

The event where Government and DRC were expected to finalise the deal yesterday did not take place as Ms Siliya was at Parliament and Mr Shawa was in his office at the ministry.

However, a company engaged in facilitating the deal on behalf of the Congo government, was able to brief the media.

This was after Mr Shawa, Congolese deputy ambassador to Zambia and a few others had a closed door meeting at the ministry.

Addressing the media at the ministry, Kikia Enterprises Limited managing director Eric Kapai said the deal was that Government would provide Congo a permit to import 30,000 metric tonnes of maize and 50,000 metric tonnes of mealie meal.

Mr Kapai explained that Congo could not import the commodities last year because it did not have a permit from Government.

“We came here to get a response on our request to export 30,000 tonnes of maize and 50,000 tonnes of mealie meal,

“Last year we did not receive the product in Congo because we ended up reaching up the period of the vote. We came this year to request the permit to import the products,” he said.

Mr Kapai explained the Zambian Government fully supported the deal.

“We would like to report to you that everything at this stage is going well and the Zambian Government is supporting the programme 100 percent. We will come back again at the ministry to receive our last document to authorise us to export the products to Congo,” he said.

Mr Kapai could however not take questions from the media for more details of the deal.

The mealie meal and the maize under this deal was understood to be purely commercial from the private sector and not the Food Reserve Agency (FRA).