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The Consumers Association of Malawi (Cama) has accused some unscrupulous traders of taking advantage of the scarcity of fertilizer on the market to unfairly charge higher prices for the commodity.
Cama executive director John Kapito said the consumer rights watchdog’s research on pricing and distribution of fertilizer has revealed that most traders were hoarding the commodity and are colluding in fixing the current fertilizer prices.
Recommended retail prices for fertilizer are around K2,800 per 50 kilogramme bag but some traders were selling between K3,200 and K3,700 per bag of the same quantity.
Kapito said the practice by these unscrupulous traders were against the Fair Trading and Competition laws and asked the ministries of Agriculture and Trade and Private Sector Development to intervene.
The Cama survey, according to Kapito, also established that most fertilizers sold are underweight with most bags weighing between 30 and 45 kilogrammes instead of 50 kilogrammes.
“Most of the fertilizer is also discanted in plain sacks and therefore not labelled, making it difficult for the ordinary consumer to know the quality and quantity of the commodity one is purchasing,” said Kapito.
The country is currently facing a fertilizer shortage which stakeholders, including the National Smallholder Farmers Association of Malawi (Nasfam), have blamed on lack of proper planning and delays of the agricultural input subsidy programme which left many farmers looking forward to cheaper inputs instead of getting prepared on their own.
The tobacco industry has also hinted that the scarcity of Calcium Ammonium Nitrate and other compounds used as second top dressers will not only affect the volume but also the quality of the country’s number one foreign exchange earner.
But Ministry of Agriculture secretary Andrew Daudi has maintained that fertilizer would be available anytime.
He said government had a Targeted Input Programme meeting with the suppliers who indicated that the fertilizer had already left ports of Durban, Nacala and Beira as of December 31 last year.
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