President Edgar Lungu’s initiative to establish milling plants in all the 10 Provinces will create more than 30-thousand jobs and reduce the price of mealie meal.
Development Bank of Zambia -DBZ- whose organisation will manage the finances from China for the project has revealed.
DBZ Managing Director Jacob Lushinga says the Presidential initiative is aimed at tackling mostly rural poverty and curbing unemployment at the same time.
Mr. Lushinga was speaking in Stockholm on the sidelines of a NORSAD board meeting.
NORSAD is a development fund co-owned by SADC and Nordic countries.
Mr Lushinga says under the plan, small milling plants will be set up in various parts of Zambia where excess maize is produced so that the milling of the commodity can be done at the source of production in order to push down the prices of ZAMBIA’s staple food mealie meal.
He says mealie meal prices are high for an average person because of costs of transportation which millers pass onto Consumers.
Mr Lishinga added that he has just returned from China and that total package amounts to about 50-Thousand US dollars per plant.
During campaigns President Lungu promised to bring down the prices of maize and continues to create employment jobs by taking milling plants to places of crop production and cut the cost of transportation.
Mr. Lushinga says once DBZ has completed the structuring of the milling plant financing, it will disburse the finances to the Zambia Corporative Federation -ZCF who will identify the key areas for the milling plants and implement the entire initiative.
He says President Lungu wants a permanent solution to the reduction in food prices starting on a small-scale level.
Mr Lushinga was recently re-elected in the NORSAD Fund board in Stockholm, Sweden, where he represents Zambia as Managing Director of DBZ, a state development bank.
znbc
Edger for president…
And how much will they pay since every neighbourhood will have a milling plant?
Mr also me
Indeed, gd luck
That’s positive neh.
Good to agitate,,,, good results will come.
We waiting to hear the up dates on the Issue.