The Government says it has injected US$30 million into the Cotton Company of Zimbabwe (COTTCO) to enable the company to buy raw cotton from farmers.
The cotton selling season opened in May but COTTCO has been struggling to pay farmers for their product.
COTTCO chairperson Sifelani Jabangwe told The Sunday Mail that the US$30 million will enable the firm to cover outstanding payments. He said:
We are pleased to announce that, following yesterday’s (Tuesday) Cabinet meeting, our company has been allocated a total of US$30 million to buy cotton from farmers.
Prior to this meeting, we were facing challenges to make payments to our farmers because our coffers had just 40 percent of the total amount required to pay for the total deliveries to be made during this season.
Zimbabwe Farmers Union (ZFU) director Paul Zakariya said farmers welcome Government’s intervention.
Cotton Producers and Marketers Association chairman Stewart Mubonderi, said:
The delay of payments to the farmers was a major challenge. We hope that from this new financial injection, we will see a great improvement.
Farmers were ending up doing side marketing because they will be in need of money while the proper channel was not forthcoming with payments.
We hope all these will be the things of the past and hope COTTCO will ensure a smooth flow of payments throughout all channels.
To date, 54 000 tonnes of cotton worth US$80 million have been delivered, against the target of 96 000 tonnes.
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