Interview with senior Disaster Preparedness official Lucius Chikuni, Part 2

Malawi, like its neighbour Zambia, has staged a remarkable recovery from the widespread food shortages of the 2002/03 agricultural season. From a situation where nearly 3 million Malawians needed food aid to survive at the height of the past year's crisis, aid agencies now estimate that the need for food aid will peak at about 400,000 people in January 2004. But experts have warned that the recovery is extremely fragile. IRIN recently interviewed Lucius Chikuni, Secretary to the Minister of State Responsible for Poverty and Disaster Management Affairs and Commissioner for Disaster Preparedness Relief and Rehabilitation, in the capital, Lilongwe. This is the second part of the interview in which Chikuni outlines why he believes the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) structural adjustment directives played an aggravating role in Malawi's food crisis, and what is being done to make the country's recent agricultural recovery sustainable over the long term. MAKING THE RECOVERY SUSTAINABLE QUESTION: What is the long-term plan? ANSWER: We have embarked on a compost manure programme, so that people don't have a total reliance on inorganic soil nutrients - like fertiliser, which is expensive - because the IMF forced us to remove subsidies [on agricultural inputs]. We are still bound by that [agreement with the IMF] because balance of payments support comes from donors, which can only come if the IMF says we have been going on with the agreed programme. If the IMF says we are off-track from the agreed programme, the IMF punishes us by withholding budget support, and balance of payments support, [and] the donors follow suit. We want to re-engage the IMF on subsidies, to find out whether there can be a way around it (cutting subsidies). [But] as I said, we have embarked on a compost/manure utilisation, and also, crop and soil husbandry will be intensified, so people will be taught proper methods of farming. You see, when independence came ... [the government] of Kamuza Banda never enforced forestry management, trees were just cut ... we had serious environmental degradation. ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION My department is busy right now engaging local government on contingency plans to try and stop further environmental degradation. Still, my department has listed Malawi as right on the verge of [environmental] disaster. It is the same environmental degradation that has caused heavy siltation in our waterways, to the extent that the siltation phenomenon is now affecting electric power generation in the Shire River [the main electricity generation facility in Malawi]. This is causing a lot of serious problems for the economy, [because] of frequent power cuts ... [the national power utility] is forced to engage in load-shedding. Environmental degradation is a very big issue in this country. It will take a concerted effort to reverse it - all because of wanton cutting down of trees, even in catchment areas. Streams that were once perennial, no longer are. When floods occur, it's very bad because there's no vegetation, [so] water flows freely. We could prevent up to 60 percent of flooding in Malawi ... [through] mitigation activities [such as] aforestation of river banks and water catchment areas. And in some areas, but not on a big scale, through the construction of dykes. ECONOMIC POLICY AND FOOD SECURITY Q: What of plans to privatise the Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation (ADMARC), which is seen as a safety net for the vulnerable? A: They [ADMARC] have markets throughout the countryside. The concern is, if it is privatised, would the private owner keep these markets - maintain and sustain markets which are not profitable? The answer is no. The private owner would be looking for a return on investment. Some of these markets are not profitable, [they] are a social service, and people are concerned about this. But then again, the IMF and the donors say we must privatise ADMARC, along with the other parastatals. I believe the Bretton Woods Institutions are wrong - they don't look at the social aspects of the parastatals. When these social aspects are removed, misery is brought on the people. The people become poorer. (The IMF and its sister organisation, the World Bank, were born in 1944 in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, and are commonly referred to as the Bretton Woods Institutions.) My own view is - we should be permitted to conduct privatisation at a comfortable pace, a pace that will not cause a crash for the people of Malawi. Q: What happened with government's distributions of agricultural inputs to communities, the so-called starter-pack programme? A: The universal starter-pack programme helped Malawi a lot. In 1999/2000 Malawi produced a surplus of 500,000 mt of maize, a total of 2.5 million mt. But in 2000/2001, donor pressure forced us to cut the starter-pack programme and embark on a targeted inputs programme (TIP). Following that season, Malawi went into the food crisis. Of course, there were other factors like the erratic weather but, in the main, it was because people could not afford [agricultural] inputs. Because the removal of [agricultural] subsidies happened at the same time, inputs became unaffordable. (It is estimated that up to 65 percent of Malawians live below the poverty line - on less than US $1 a day.) The international community thinks we sold off the strategic grain reserves (which aggravated the food shortages) but the major factors contributing to the crisis were: the removal of subsidies for inputs; and transforming from the universal starter-pack programme to the TIP. These are the factors that took us into the food crisis we have just experienced. Interview with senior Disaster Preparedness official Lucius Chikuni, Part 1