Farmers are pushing for the introduction of a local purchase policy to ensure Basotho products hit the shelves without having to go through certification in South Africa.
They say the absence of such a policy negatively affects them because their products often fail to meet strict requirements set by mostly giant foreign-owned shop owners and retailers operating in the country.
Lesotho currently does not have a certification institution and relies on the South African Bureau of Standards (SABS), whose requirements are often difficult for local farmers and small producers to meet.
The Lesotho National Farmers Union (LENAFU) vice president, Daniel Chakela, said lack of laboratories to test and certify products was a huge challenge for them.
He called on the government to introduce certification locally and introduce measures to help local farmers grow and sustain their operations.
Chakela said the proposed policy would allow the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Business Development to certify farmers who are registered in the government database.
Once certified, retailers would be able to stock their products without having to go through SAB, thereby saving huge costs, he told theReporter in an interview this week.
Chakela explained that farmers had previously approached the ministry, urging it to address challenges that hinder the smooth operations of local farmers, particularly the lack of support for locally produced goods.
“There should be a policy binding registered businesses, whether big or small from supermarkets to wholesalers to prioritise Basotho products,” he noted.
“It’s a plea we are still making even now. Every country’s economy and development is supported and strengthened by its own products.”
The farmers urged the government to localise certification standards so that products are quickly approved by the relevant authorities.
The Secretary General of Potato Lesotho Association, Sekila Molapo, said an immediate short term solution to help local farmers would be the introduction of a government institutional procurement preference. This is a policy requiring all state institutions such as schools, hospitals, prisons, the military, and government canteens, to source a defined percentage of their food from registered Lesotho producer organisations before importing or buying from South African commercial suppliers.
Molapo told this publication recently that this is narrower than a full local purchase policy but more achievable and enforceable.
He said such an arrangement helps create a guaranteed market without requiring the government to become a trader.
Most importantly, it can be built on the existing domestic preference provisions in the 2023 Public Procurement Act without requiring new primary legislation.
“Our advice regarding the development of a local purchase policy is that it should create two clearly separated functions; a strategic food reserve function, funded by the government, responsible for price stabilisation purchases and emergency stocks, and a commercial aggregation function, potentially managed by a farmer cooperative federation rather than a parastatal, responsible for buying, grading, storing, and selling smallholder produce into the institutional market,” Molapo noted.
Kemong Masupha from the Department of Business Development in the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Business said they were currently reviewing a policy on micro, small and medium enterprises.
Masupha said LENAFU was one of the stakeholders consulted on how to increase the market for local products.
“The local content policy seeks to boost the availability and consummation of Lesotho products, instead of relying on imports,” he added.
However, the farmers’ woes might soon be a thing of the past if construction of the multi-million maloti Lesotho Standard Institution (LSI) headquarters at Ha Tikoe Industrial Estate in Maseru is completed by the end of the year, as expected by the main contractor.
The project manager of the main contractor, Qingjian (CNQC) and Founda Construction Joint Venture, George Zizhou, said the project is going well
“We have started concrete works for the foundations and expect to finish construction by the end of this year,” he told theReporter in a brief telephone.
The project has faced significant delays due to a myriad challenges including payment holdups, internal administrative hurdles, and government red tape.
The national standards body was estimated to cost M103 million in 2013 when the project was mooted but construction only began in January last year – 12 years later – at a whopping M260 million.
Government has said the huge jump in cost was owing to various reasons including inflation and work changes, which necessitated extended timeframes.
Lack of proper coordination between government departments and ministries has also been fingered for the perennial delays.
Once complete, the facility will house:
- 37 specialised laboratory rooms (textile, wool and mohair, metrology, chemical, food, pharmaceutical, electro-technical, agricultural inputs, automobile, etc.)
- 12 rooms for technical committees and training
- 2 rooms for publications and sales
- A documentation centre and 27 offices space
