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| Business |
| Admarc stays put |
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by
Aubrey Mchulu, 22 September 2004
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20:14:53
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Much ado about nothing? Could that be the story of the controversial commercialisation of the state crop marketer Admarc?
Nine months down the road, it is business as usual at Admarc because government is yet to decide on how the limited company, established by an Act of Parliament last December, should run its affairs in a competitive way.
Admarc board chairman Ben Dzowela said on Monday the organisation is waiting for the 2004/05 national budget to see if it will move forward because there were no allocations for its new roles in the previous budget.
“To move into new gear, we need recapitalisation and to lay-off staff so that we can survive competition. But we can’t do that now because we have no money,” he said in an interview.
Dzowela said Admarc is still running all the markets it had before the commercialisation bill was passed during a special sitting of Parliament. He said the company also maintains the same staff estimated in thousands.
But in the budget currently being debated in Parliament, Finance Minister Goodall Gondwe is asking the National Assembly to approve a K100 million allocation for Admarc to run social responsibilities on behalf of government.
Further to this amount, the budget also proposes K900 million for the restructuring of the crop marketer. This will cater for the retrenchments that the company is talking about.
Government said Admarc will run about 80 markets commercially and 200 on behalf of government, especially in rural areas, as a social responsibility.
Former Finance Minister Friday Jumbe, who was Admarc general manager before his cabinet appointment in January 2002, said in January this year that government was undecided on the running of the social markets taken off the shoulders of the commercialised Admarc.
The current government position on Admarc’s social responsibility could not be obtained because James Phiri, director of the Public Enterprise Reform and Management Unit, could not be reached for comment as his mobile phone went unanswered and was constantly reported out of office.
Reacting to delays by Admarc to assume its commercial roles, Malawi Economic Justice Network national coordinator Collins Magalasi said the development has proved civil society fears that government rushed to privatise Admarc before putting structures in place.
Magalasi, whose organisation coordinated a civil society coalition that fought against the commercialisation of Admarc, said it was questionable that government rushed to ask Admarc Limited to run its social markets before it identified funds nine months ago.
“We are not surprised. This only demonstrates government’s state of unpreparedness. It’s a symptom that something is wrong somewhere,” he said.
Economics Association of Malawi spokesman Perks Ligoya is on record to have said in an earlier interview with The Nation that government hurried the Admarc Bill through Parliament because of donor pressure.
He said government bulldozed the bill in Parliament allegedly under the influence of the World Bank and IMF conditionality that if the bill did not pass, they would not disburse funds for pro-poor funds.
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