Renowned economic analyst, Noel Nkhoma has urged the government to either commercialise or scrap off the Farmer Input Support Program (FISP).
He says the program is useless and should be abandoned.
Nkhoma the only beneficiaries of the program are fertilizer companies and not farmers as intended.
He says in its current form, the FISP program is draining government resources.
Under the FISP, the government distributes subsidised agricultural inputs to small-scale producers of the staple food crop, maize. It also provides a guaranteed minimum price at which the Food Reserve Agency (FRA) buys maize, cassava and sorghum from farmers.
For some, the only way to avoid significant overspending on the FISP is for the government to curtail the FRA’s expenditure on buying maize and other crops from farmers.
