Government officials yesterday raided Spar Supermarket at Fife Avenue Shopping Centre in Harare and took several trolleys of snowflake self-raising wheat flour allegedly smuggled from South Africa.
The senior Agricultural economist in the ministry Mr
Simbarashe Masanga said business people must apply for import permits so that
they operate freely.
“We cannot issue permits for these products because the
idea is that we understand that there is a substantial amount of flour in the
country, a lot of local brands that can compete easily but due to the illegal
nature of these products, this will pose a negative competition on our local
products because it is not paying duty,” he said.
“To bring sanity to the agricultural marketing space we
have to do these raids once in a while.”
The operation is expected to be cascaded to all provinces.
A fine for selling goods without import permits is US$1 100.
Zimbabwe has not been allowing the importation of flour as we have enough millers in this country to meet our national need. Therefore any foreign flour we see on our shelves is highly likely to have been smuggled in and subject into the country. pic.twitter.com/w8148XVCFs
— Nick Mangwana (@nickmangwana) October 10, 2024
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