via Bulawayo24 NEWS | Zimbabwe bans imports of fresh fruits and vegetables with immediate effect by Reuters 02 April 2014
Zimbabwe has banned imports of fresh fruit and vegetables with immediate effect, the agriculture ministry said on Wednesday, arguing that increased local production will meet domestic demand.
The ban will mostly impact supplies of tomatoes, potatoes, mangoes, grapes and apples from neighbouring South Africa, the ministry said in a statement.
South African fruit and vegetable exports to Zimbabwe are worth at least $1m a month, according to trade data.
Zimbabwe’s farming output, including from its staple maize crop, has slumped by over 60 percent since 2000.
Critics say President Robert Mugabe – in power since independence from Britain in 1980 – turned one of Africa’s most promising economies and a regional bread basket to a net importer of food.
But Mugabe’s Zanu-PF says the economy, which shrank by over 40 percent in the decade to 2009, had been sabotaged by Western powers opposed to his nationalist policies.
Source: Reuters
COMMENTS
Does the government imagine that their second grade war heroes are even remotely capable of growing sufficient vegetables for the local market? Has even one minute of research been done before making this policy or is it simply the result of a drunken conversation between uninformed persons? These substandard simpletons have been running the country for 34 years and have still learned absolutely nothing. Issuing regulations while seated on a fat bottom behind an oversized desk without regard to actual reality is a tried and failed habit of ZANU misrule. How many times to you have to make the same dumb mistake before you actually learn.
If you want to supply the local market with locally grown produce you have to make sure their is a conductive environment in which the business of farming can be done. It is ZANU policy that such an environment is specifically excluded. Only thieves, incompetents and other layabouts are given access to commercial scale land. Peasant farmers are a dead loss for anything except tomatoes, rape and other such simple fare.
We are now going to suffer so that a few ZANU deadbeats can supply the market at high prices
Forward with the revolution. Why not introduce an oxygen tax for all people who breath air. This level of stupidity will only be topped by the next move by our gallant heroes.
Well said John.
This will affect the poor and S African farmers who will lose another market.This will force us to grow our own vegetables which I prefer because I use natural manure and zero pesticides.I have never really liked boosted S African agricultural products because most of them are GM products.
These are decisions done without proper research which tend to backfire within a few months.
ZANUpf is very good in banning things, radios, homosexuals, imported milk etc… It appears that they just wake up in the morning and just ban something probably just after talking about it in a meeting. What they don’t realise is that the demand in the imported items has been fuelled by the local us of the american $ which is over 10 times than any other currency in Africa.
I assume that Gono told the president that he can supply all these veges and fruit when Mugabe visited THE FARM. Next to be banned will be poultry products. Then grains etc.We will eventually starve to death even with dollars in the pocket.
I thought they had chopped down all the fruit trees and turned all the vegetable farms into tobacco?
Don’t rely on local produce there isn’t any petrol to get from a to b and then there is no electricity to pump the water to clean the vegetables. After this when the local stuff has run out they will import fresh produce through a zanupf controlled corrupt business setup by one of mugabes cronies
Another case of pure corruption, why would the Zanu chefs want any competition for their ‘crops’,grace has already enforced consumption of her own dairy products now this bunch of arseholes are trying to protect a tiny bunch of kleptomaniacs,this is genocide..
The word is CHIEFS not CHEFS!
Zimra loses more revenue – not sure how much tax the farmers currently pay(if any) – but one things for sure paying the civil servants wages is becoming harder and harder. maybe they will be paid in home grown produce??
My natural kindness makes me feel for the poor but they are the ones who decides what type of rulers we get,so its relatively fine for them to suffer a bit to realise their mistakes or its already too late for that.They have been killed mentally therefore whatever the bosses say its fine with them.
I can see a situation whereby the councils will raise all water charges and heavy penalties for over usage per month to raise their incomes for further looting.
I want to remind my friends who laughed at me when I told them that the introduction of multiple currency has only short term solutions with real problems coming back unless we change our approach to economic policies .They did not believe me because most of them failed to think properly due to short term gains.Where are we now? Back to square one or even worse now.The USA $ has been transformed into the old Zimbabwe dollar making prices very high for the masses to survive but easy for the looters to bank it off-shows.The move was done to justify and legalise transfers of the USA $s by internal and external looters with minimum checks and controls.The masses naively accepted the move with hidden tricks masterminded by those who wanted to bail out the party which was struggling to survive economically.
They have forced ethanol on the people, now it will be substandard farm produce, packaged in grubby conditions. It is not unusual to see cabbages, rape, tomatoes etc being transported on smoke belching ramshackle trucks, and the same being offloaded at supermarkets. What next?
let them ban but what i know is that it wont take us long before we see smuggled fruits and vegies in trucks going for market by the same pple who are banning importation of these. it wont take us long before we hear that 1 apple is = $1 because they want to capitalise. remember they are the ones with farms so they charge what they want. they dont care about vanambuya kumusha. they simply wake up and effect a ban on importation of goods that they think they can meet the domestic demand but they cant. they are bad carpenters who quarrels with their tools…last time they vowed to ban importation of cheap japanese cars in a move that they said they want to promote local market but absolutely we dont have car manufacturer in zimbabwe. why did they tried that? yes because they imported those cars first and have made sure that their cars sales only is where everyone must go and buy with higher prices….they said they are going to put a ban on left
Its worse than we all think. It is genocide instead.
Mugabe thinks politically and never economically or socially. His psychopathic mind is set on strangling the urbanites into total subjugation. Of late his major problem has been how to lay siege on the urban electorate that has rejected him since 2000 right thru to the last election in 2013. Mugabe is what Pol Pot was to Cambodia but only more cunning perhaps. In Matebeleland he succeeded in exterminating 20 000 innocent souls without the world raising a finger in protest. Today he is rewarded as deputy chair of AU and soon chair of SADC. Nobody to date has even intimated taking the willy fox to the Hague for those obvious crimes against humanity. This has encouraged him and his lot to pursue their agenda to the end until any opposition is totally exterminated or at subjugated. That is all he thinks about.
Of course standing in Mugabe’s way is Tsvangirai who unlike Nkomo in the 80s is always quick to see this and in response keeps on stirring up the urban people to rise and in the process exposing his intentions to the glare of the international radar. This has had the impact of holding Mugabe back albeit for a while he bids his next move.
This time around he wants to use economic means to achieve that which he failed to achieve through brute force. Murambatsvina was not enough. Now it is fruit and vegetable; all that meant at urbanites. Mugabe clearly stated his preoccupation with this and his burning anger with the urbanites in his speech at the Heroes acre. This has been inadvertently echoed by Patrick Chinamasa who declared that their government will build a new economy ostensibly on the ashes of the old one. Chinamasa was categoric that in place of the urban industry they would built an economy on the rural areas citing new tobacco farmers etc. Indeed they have embarked on that route.
I call on all human rights organisation to take note and raise this issue at all forums for it is a reality.
some comments are just negative even if gvt policy is well intended. whats wrong banningimports to support local farmers and jobs. honestly we can grow potatoes and tomatoes.
That is a stupid comment, we all know that Zim is incapable of producing vegies etc on a commercial basis… wake up!
ZPF fool commenting here!
Zimbabawe can’t grow a carrot, let alone get it to market,
get a fair price and get paid in acceptable currency.
No, fool, what do you do, grow vegetables or sit in a stuffy,
un-air-conditioned, late on rent ZPF office somewhere!
I happen to have experience in electritical,mechanical and electronic fields you definitely need bsics of these fields to run a piece of land properly eg when your booster pump or your submersible pump fails you should know where to look,when your ZESA fails you should be able to use your st/by generator and when your delivery vehicle stops suddenly you should know where to look.If you are not capable of that you should be prepared to hire qualified personnel for each of the fields or an all round person.Do not think like uneducated people who think money grows on leaves? What makes Gono different from the other looters? At least he has common sense to hire qualified people to run his farms.A farm needs all the three fields I have mentioned plus a bit of chemical understanding to avoid over usage of pesticides which could endanger the public.Controlled use of fertilizers is important to avoid soil chemistry damage by changing its pH value..Stop dreaming about proper commercial farming until you acquire the necessary skills..