Agriculture Cabinet Secretary (CS) Mithika Linturi has threatened to revoke permits for over 20 millers who have not yet lowered the Unga prices.
CS Linturi has summoned the local millers on Friday, April 21 to explain why they are yet to lower prices of their various brands.
This comes after a spot check revealed that only a one maize miller, Ajab, was selling its products below Ksh.170 even after President William Ruto publicly announced that the cost of Unga will go down significantly this week.
Moreover, while speaking during an interview with Citizen TV on Tuesday night, CS Linturi stated that the Unga brand Ajab was one of the beneficiaries of the state’s decision to grant maize millers permits to import maize duty-free.
“I have called all of the maize millers who are beneficiaries for a meeting on Friday because whatever revenue the government is going to lose by way of import duty must be reflected in the reduction of the price of that commodity in the market,” he said.
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“I think Ajab’s consignment has started coming in and that is why it has moved very fast to bring down the cost of unga. I will call other millers to find out when they will bring their consignments. They might have problems in raising the money required to import the maize, or raising certain instruments for foreign trading but I will know for certain on Friday.” The Agriculture CS added.
Furthermore, the permits to import duty-free maize expire in August, when local maize farmers are harvesting.
As such, Linturi said the millers who applied for the permits but won’t have brought in the commodities by then risk having their import licenses revoked.
“This is why I am calling the importers this Friday. I want to give them notice so that they can understand that if they are late in the delivery of commodities then it will not be good for them,” said CS Linturi.
“I will finally end up cancelling their permits, immediately there are signs that my farmers are harvesting the maize that we’ve been trying to support them to grow.” He added.