Wed, 17 Jan 2018 13:54:57 +0000
By MAILESI BANDA
ABOUT 700, 000 farmers out of the targeted 1, 000, 000 have been captured on the E- voucher platform of distributing inputs through the Farmer Input Support Programme (FISP).
Permanent Secretary in the Office of the President E-Government division Martine Mtonga said out of 700, 000 captured farmers, 575,617 have so far been serviced with the various agriculture products available.
Speaking during a joint press briefing with the Ministry of Agriculture on the performance of the FISP programme, Dr. Mtonga said the programme has performed well since they have recorded 71.4 percent coverage of farmers.
And on the individual bank performance in the distribution of funds, Dr. Mtonga said Indo Zambia Bank has performed exceptionally well after covering 87 percent of the farmers allocated to it.
“Indo Zambia Bank has performed well after being given 30, 315 farmers. They have managed to service 26,429,” he said.
Dr. Mtonga announced that UBA Bank has the lowest percentage of serviced customers due to a number of challenges they faced especially with wrong national registration numbers. Out of the 125,472 farmers allocated to the bank, only 60, 000 representing 48 percent were serviced.
“So far we have managed to capture 700, 000 Farmers out of the 1 million and this represents 71.4 percent.
And Ministry of Agriculture Permanent Secretary Julius Shawa said an additional 48 million has been released to load the cards.
Mr. Shawa said for farmers with multinational cards that where sent back to financial institutions, the ministry has engaged agro dealers to provide the farmers with inputs.
“We had a challenge with some cards that had malfunctioned and the financial institutions had to send these cards out of the country for six weeks to be worked on.”
“We realised that six weeks was too long a time for a farmer and engaged with agro dealers who gave the farmers inputs and we paid them directly,” he said.
He said the Ministry of Agriculture and Smart Zambia will in March review the performance of the E voucher programme.
