Admarc opening, distribution of relief maize floods the staple on the market, prices going down
Maize prices have continued to decline in recent weeks as supply of the staple grain has been rising across the country due to in-kind lean season response by the Department of Disaster Management Affairs (Dodma) and the opening of Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation (Admarc) markets.
The decline has also been attributed to influx of traders from other districts offering lower prices, and the removal of the import ban on Tanzanian maize.
Minister of Agriculture Sam Kawale—briefing Malawians on what government is doing to tame the food problem—had indicated earlier that once availability of maize improves, there will be a significant drop in flour prices across the country.
In its recent January 2024 Monthly Maize Market Report, the International Food Policy Research Institute is an international (Ifpri) observed that in the first 11 days of 2024, average maize prices continued their upward trend, before entering a decline in nearly all monitored markets.
The final week of January 2024 thus saw a weekly average price of maize rose to K887 per kilogramme (kg), only three percent above the final week of December 2023.
Reads the market report in part: “This is 73 percent higher in nominal terms than in the last week of January 2023, when maize was on average retailing at K512 per kg.”
However, the monthly average retail price in the Central Region was slightly lower at K911 per kg while in the North, the monthly average retail price stood at K710 per kg, with Chitipa recording the lowest weekly average price of K623 per kg in the final week of January, reflecting the region’s overall lowest prices as compared to the rest.
“However, the price decline in most Northern [Region] markets was more modest than in the rest of the country, so that prices in the region did not quite drop to the level at the end of December 2023,” said Ifpri in the report.
Meanwhile, Admarc sales were reported in 19 of the 26 markets monitored by Ifpri, three in the Northern Region, another three in the Central Region and 13 in the Southern region.
Grain Traders Association of Malawi president Grace Mijiga-Mhango is on record as having confirmed that maize prices were shifting downwards due to formal imports that have begun trickling in.
She further said as people start consuming pumpkins and other farm produce, the demand for maize will decline further.
“This also means, prices will continue going down,” she said.
Maize is an important crop to the country which as part of food component, contributes about 53.7 percent to the Consumer Price Index, an aggregate basket of goods and services for computing inflation.
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