Zimbabwe potato producers seek import permit amid shortage
Hanawa Super Foods, a potato chips company, made the appeal to the Industry and Commerce ministry on Monday, as it seeks to step up efforts to fill in gaps created by Statutory Instrument (SI) 64 of June 2016, which banned foreign made potato crisps.
The company’s managing director, Simbarashe Zhou, told NewsDay, after a tour of their facilities on Monday in Harare, that they had invested about $3 million into their business and as such desperately needed to import potatoes to get returns.
“Due to the above normal rainfall that we had, our potato farming shifted people to start planting potatoes beginning of March, so what was in the country was completely exhausted. There are no potatoes currently in the country.”
Zhou said they needed assistance in the facilitation of the nostro fund allocation from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe to enable them to get foreign currency to import potatoes.
source: newsday.co.zw
