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Foodstuffs expected to increase include chicken, eggs, rice, soya beans, bread and mealie meal (maize flour), the state run Zambia Daily Mail reported Wednesday.
Managing Director, Hybrid Poultry Farm Limited, Richard Keeley, disclosed here that a gradual increase in their products like chicken and eggs should be expected by consumers due to increase in fuel and shortage of feed-stock on the market.
The price of cereals like maize has increased from US$ 200 per tonne last year to US$ 400 per tonne while wheat has also increased from US$ 325 to US$ 600 per tonne.
Keeley explained that prices of maize and soya beans were the major input in the poultry farm business, whose price had doubled as cost of grain on the global market increased.
He said the appreciation of the Kwacha against the US dollar had helped in off-setting some of the losses the company was having on soya beans, maize and fuel, while high cost of beef on the market had also helped in boosting growth in the chicken sector.
He said for the past three years, chicken had been the cheapest protein, which had also added to boosting demand for the product. “Other factors boosting the poultry industry is the increase in disposable by people triggered by the growth in the mining sector and the country's debt cancellation. When there is more money around, people tend to spend more on food especially proteins,” he said.
Managing Director of the National Milling Corporation Limited, Peter Cottan, said the cost of fuel in the past one year had more than doubled.
Cottan said as millers, they had tried to keep prices as low as possible, adding that they could not continue to subsidise consumers.
“We are seeing the price of feedstock increasing due to the shortage of soya beans on the market which has to be imported. The price of bread on the market has stabilised because we imported wheat,” he said.
“We need more maize on the market to stabilise the price of mealie meal. My appeal is for farmers to plant more soya beans, maize, wheat and rice,” he said.
Cottan said price of rice on the international market had trippled, adding that annually 40,000 tonnes to 50,000 tonnes of the commodity was imported in the country.
He said the solution to mitigate the cost of foods like cereals was for producers to increase their production.
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