Chamisa tells industry minister to stop waffling

HON. HOLDER:  Thank you Madam Speaker. The reason why I called for a supplementary question is, I understood what the Hon. Minister said but here we are living on reality and the reality is that the prices of any commodity in any shop has gone up –[HON. MEMBERS: Yes!] –  Currently, as I speak, all vegetables and other stuff have been banned from importation.

I am saying, what mechanism has he put in place?  What are they going to do now because it is affecting everybody here?  I thank you.

HON. DR. BIMHA:  Thank you Madam Speaker, there are two aspects to this issue.  First of all, there is no ban and I want to repeat that when we came up  with Statutory Instruments to regulate the importation of certain goods, we indicated that this is not a ban and that when there are issues to do with the supply and demand, we will facilitate the importation of those products because as Government, we do not want to witness shortages.  So, if we are in a position where our local producers are not in a position to meet demand, we will allow importation.

  However in the interim, while this exercise that I have explained earlier on is taking place, my Ministry has been having inspectors around all the provinces in the country who have been monitoring the price escalations from the 24th September to date to ensure that we have facts when we approach the producers.  So, we now have information of what has been happening as regards prices and issues that we will have to engage the retailers, producers and wholesalers.  We can only do that when we have information and that information is now available.  I thank you.

HON. MLISWA:  Madam Speaker, thank you very much.  I hope that the Hon. Minister realises that by accepting that there is hyper-inflation which is caused by political instability and inflation is due to mere economics.  So, it is clear that he has admitted that there is political instability.  With that in mind, how does he intend to address this situation because hyper-inflation is a result of political instability?  How then is he going to respond to the political instability which is there so that there is no hyper-inflation?

HON. DR. BIMHA:  Thank you Madam Speaker. I would like to thank the Hon. Member for raising that question.  Madam Speaker, the issue of economic stability is the responsibility of all us.  I thank you.

THE HON. DEPUTY SPEAKER:  Order, order, Hon. Members. Those who need to bring in supplementary questions – I think we agreed that the Minister is bringing a Ministerial Statement, so if we continue asking the same Minister – we have the whole bench of Ministers and so many questions to ask.  The last supplementary question I am giving to Hon. Ziyambi and you can bring in your question as an original question and not a supplementary question.

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