Posted on November, 2, 2018 at 10:18 am
By JAINDI KISERO
We are staring at the biggest maize scandal in Kenya’s history.
So far, the following facts have emerged. First, maize worth billions of shillings, and purchased by monies from the taxpayers have rotted in stores belonging to the State-owned National Cereal and Produce Board (NCPB), rendering it unfit for human consumption. This fact has been confirmed by the Kenya Bureau of Standards (Kebs).
The Senate’s Agriculture Committee, which has just completed a first hand- inspection tour of NCPB stores throughout the country, - reported that at a place called Nyansiongo in Kisii County, members found thousands of bags of beans that had been lying in a store for more than ten years.
Secondly, it emerged that the government imported an extra four million bags over and above the six million bags that had been approved by an inter-ministerial committee.
Thirdly, it has been revealed that when the harvesting period for locally produced maize arrived, the NCPB decided to concentrate on buying maize from traders instead local farmers thus denying lthe latter access to the only marketing outlet for their produce.
Fourthly, in October, 2016, the Strategic Food Reserves Oversight Board entered into an agency agreement with NCPB for the purchase of two million bags of maize for a period of two years on a budget for Sh6 billion.
However, the NCPB went ahead and spent a total of Sh 11 billion, way above the budget set for strategic maize reserves. Clearly, the NCPB is firmly under capture by traders and the politically- influential maize millers lobby. The maize market is especially vulnerable to dodgy dealings because of the existence of parallel markets. There are cereals that come in duty-free during food shortages then you have those purchased from farmers.
In addition, the NCPB stores and manages imports and locally purchased maize for the national strategic reserves.
It has also emerged that-away from the public limelight NCPB has been engaged in a shady business of leasing stores and silos to private millers. The senators found that some of the maize in NCPB stores belonged to private individuals while others belonged to traders and millers.
It is a perfect setting for arbitrage and dodgy dealings between NCPB and unscrupulous millers and traders. We all know that there are many occasions when the NCPB has had to buy maize from traders and millers.
It does not surprise that forensic audits have revealed cases where unscrupulous individuals posing as farmers were purporting to have delivered to the NCPB quantities that were way beyond what the acreage of their farms could produce. One case is where an individual with a 10 acre piece of land planted with maize was claiming to have delivered 1,800 bags yet the known standard rate is 25 bags of maize per acre in most maize growing areas. The maximum such a farmer would have delivered to NCPB was 250 bags.
There is a big chance that unscrupulous individuals have been delivering air to the NCPB even as they claim millions. Another possibility is that millions of bags of duty-free maize imported with taxpayers’ money to stabilise domestic flour prices or for the strategic grain reserves ends up in the hands of traders and private millers and is sold back to the NCPB.
So, when the Ministry of Agriculture insists that the taxpayer did not lose any money in the maize scandal, they are engaging in blatant lies.
How can you insist that the taxpayer has not lost money when maize brought into the country duty-free ends up being sold at huge margins to consumers? The grain imports business in this country is dominated by a politically- well-connected clique. A few years ago, the government introduced subsidised maize into the market and the cartels reaped huge margins.
This maize scandal should not end with public officials being arrested and prosecuted. It is time to dismantle the NCPB and to abolish this remnant of the control era and thus consign the entity to join its predecessors, the defunct Maize and Produce Board, the defunct Sugar and Cereals Finance Corporation and the Kenya National Trading Corporation.
Source: Business Daily