The Minister of Entrepreneurship has assured Ngamiland cattle producers that the abattoir will expedite payments to farmers and intensify efforts to ship unsold meat products.
Karabo Gare acknowledged that cattle farmers have been frustrated by delays in payment, which he attributed to a statutory requirement to regularise with the anti-money laundering policy.
“All those Ngamiland farmers who are owed, and whose money is due or overdue for payment will be paid without fail by next week,” the minister said during an address on the Maja a Ikgorosa Scheme in Maun last week.
He blamed inactive bank accounts and unconfirmed banking details, which he said are required under the Anti-Money Laundering policy to process payment. The national abattoir, the Botswana Meat Commission (BMC) will double its efforts to immediately ship unsold meat in its storage to raise income that will guarantee a future supply of cattle and improved payments turnaround to farmers.
“We will do our very best to ensure that the bottlenecks, which we have experienced with the sale of meat products derived from cattle slaughtered in Maun are overcome,” he said.
In part, he said the bottlenecks are the ones that contributed to delays—considering that the BMC must sell the meat first, to raise revenue that can, in turn, be used to pay farmers.
Under the SADC-EU Economic Partnership Agreement, Botswana beef cattle enjoy duty-free, quota-free access to the European market. Only 20 percent of grass-fed cattle qualify for the EU market now.
Turning to new initiatives, Minister Gare told farmers that government has introduced the Maja-a-Ikgorosa cattle feeding scheme, which he said, is designed to transition non-EU-eligible cattle to EU status, thereby enabling local farmers to access the lucrative market.
Gare outlined that the scheme is currently in Phase 1, targeting the green zones that already qualify for EU status. However, the Minister acknowledged the difficulties faced by Ngamiland and other red zones, which sell cull or aged cows.
“By their nature, cull/aged cows cannot achieve the same efficiencies (both carcass weight gains for a better market price) as weaner-cattle, which attract premium prices in the EU market,” he noted.
Gare assured farmers that the government is working to expand the Maja-a-Ikgorosa program to include non-EU zones. However, he noted that these farmers must first qualify as non-EU cattle producers and meet specific compliance requirements to secure better prices over time in a structured and sustainable manner.
Gare also addressed concerns about non-EU cattle from green zones that were slaughtered at the Maun abattoir earlier this year, causing payment delays for Ngamiland farmers.
“When we had trouble with our boilers, in Lobatse–it was decided to route non-EU eligible cattle from the green zones to the Maun abattoir – to allow Lobatse to focus on EU slaughter. The Maun abattoir could carry the load but had been under-utilised. Accordingly, and to protect the wider beef market and to assist as many farmers as possible, using the extra abattoir capacity in Maun was the only viable avenue to effectively accommodating both non-EU slaughter from Ngamiland as well as those routed from the green zones,” he explained.
According to Gare, the decision was neither meant to inconvenience nor hamper Ngamiland farmers’ access to the abattoir and during that period no cattle from Ngamiland were returned or denied access to the Maun abattoir.
Farmers from the green zones were paid ahead of those in Ngamiland, which Gare attributed to commercial realities. He explained that green zone farmers received payments from proceeds generated by their own cattle sales, facilitated through bank services specifically dedicated to green zone operations. Unfortunately, this arrangement could not be extended to Ngamiland farmers due to the types of risks that banks are currently unwilling to contract with the BMC for.
