Address maize flour crisis before it deepens

[Photo: Courtesy]

Mid last year, a serious maize shortage hit the country, causing the price of maize flour to shoot through the roof. There was an outcry which, coupled with 2017 being an election year, galvanised the authorities into action.

The Government acted by rolling out a subsidy and pegged the price of a 2-kilogram packet of maize flour at Sh90. If the maize shortage had been the creation of ubiquitous cartels, that put paid to their schemes. But even as the Government gave the subsidy, there was a timeline of December 31, 2017 for its expiry.

The average citizens’ expectation was that by that time, the Government would have initiated measures that guarantee adequate grain supplies in the country. That assumption, it would seem, was wrong. Perhaps lost in the rigours of a tightly contested general election, in which the presidential election had to be conducted twice in as many months, everything was put on hold.

Last week, the Government declared the end of the subsidy, and promptly the price of maize flour more than doubled. Days later, the commodity has disappeared from the shelves.

There is more to this than meets the eye, but there are lessons in it. Food subsidies are not the way to go; they offer only temporal respite.

Faced with severe weather conditions, the Government has no option but to embark on importing grain to meet local demand. It must come to the rescue of Wanjiku.