BY BANELE MAGONGO
MBABANE – National Maize Corporation (NMC) is working to pay agro-dealers (farmers) over E25 million.
This is in respect of debts owed by the company to the agro-dealers. This was said by the NMC Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Mavela Vilane on Eswatini TV Market View yesterday (Tuesday, July 23, 2024). He said this when sharing the different initiatives that the company is doing to make sure that the country has adequate maize and beans.
“As NMC, we have approached the Ministry of Agriculture to be assisted in ensuring that the country is helped in settling the outstanding debt. This will help the country to start on a new page. We have realised that small agri-business and private sector require liquidity,” he said.
It is stated that agro-dealers play a pivotal role in food production because it is where farmers get input for farming especially now that the government of Eswatini has introduced the Subsidy. Not being paid on time has been a major challenge to the agro-dealers and NMC is working on sorting out this issue.
Vilane elaborated that by delaying the payment, they were pushing agri-business and private sector out of business. He stated that this was not the practice that they encouraged as a company and they would improve going forward. Vilane assured them that there was still work to be done and encouraged them to partner with NMC so that they could transform the space when it came to local production of maize. He revealed that the outstanding debt they had with agro-dealers was over E25 million.