Biti: Cabinet ministers among failed farmers
29/10/2011 00:00:00
by Staff Reporter
FINANCE Minister Tendai Biti has defended his agriculture funding record
insisting criticism of his policies was only coming from failed farmers,
among them ministers in the country’s coalition government.
Bit has come under fire from cabinet colleagues accusing him of undermining
the country’s land reforms by “refusing” to adequately fund the Grain
Marketing Board (GMB) and help farmers procure inputs.
Defence Minister, Emmerson Mnangagwa recently said the GMB was failing to
pay farmers for grain supplies after being refused funding by Biti.
“We are worried that farmers struggle to get agricultural inputs due to lack
of funds when they are owed huge sums of money by the GMB,” Mnangagwa told
farmers at a meeting in Chiredzi.
“We put the blame squarely on Finance Minister Biti of the MDC-T who does
not release funds to the GMB on time,” he said.
But Biti dismissed the criticism claiming more than US$2 billion dollars has
been put into agriculture since the formation of the coalition government in
2009.
“The people who criticise our work at the ministry, especially what we have
done for the agricultural sector, do so from the viewpoint of malice and
total ignorance,” Biti said in an interview with The Herald.
“This is so particularly with failed farmers, some of whom masquerade as
Cabinet ministers who continue to be called new farmers even after 11 years
of the land reform programme.”
He said agriculture accounted for up to 40 percent of total government
expenditure since 2009 adding the sector had only started recovering after
the formation of the coalition government.
“In 2008, we could not find a bag of maize meal … wheat production was zero
and coffee and tea plantations had become sites of tourism. But in a very
short period, agricultural output has massively grown because of the
interventions of the inclusive Government,” he said.
Biti claimed some of his critics were actually responsible for the collapse
of agriculture in the last decade adding they were further holding back
recovery of the sector by blocking a much-needed land audit.
“Unfortunately, the non-genuine farmer in powerful political positions is
afraid of the (land) audit, which will expose that they are multiple farm
owners.
“It will further expose the vicious malpractices taking place on the land.
There is land that is not being productively used and that is what the audit
will expose.”
Biti said the government did not have the resources to fully fund
agriculture and warned that a full turn-around in the sector would not be
achieved unless farmers were given “securitised long land leases”.
“There is no Government in the world that can ever finance agriculture in
full. To expect the Government of the day, particularly the present GNU, to
be able to finance agriculture is fiction,” he said.
“We can talk about financing agriculture until the cows come home but as
long as the farmers do not have securitised long land leases, then let us
forget about agriculture beyond subsistence farming.
“As long as the land does not have title, it is dead capital, it has no
useful and exchange value. More importantly, without security of tenure,
farmers cannot borrow money from the banks to finance their operations.”