By EPN Reporter
MBABANE – The National Agricultural Marketing Board (NAMBoard) is yet to make a decision on the importation of mango varieties into the country.
The parastatal, under the leadership of its astute Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Bhekizwe Maziya, has today been holding a workshop at George Hotel in Manzini to ascertain the state of the mango market for Eswatini farmers.
The purpose of the workshop is to bring together mango farmers, traders, distributors, and retailers with an objective of ascertaining mango availability in the country, communicating demand and initiating linkages between buyers and sellers. The workshop is directly linked with NAMBoard’s mandate of facilitating markets for local producers.
The parastatal has all along been pleading with mango farmers to register with the Eswatini Horticulture Information System (EHIS), which is an inter-agency platform to enhance food market transparency and policy response for food security in the country.
From January 2, 2024, NAMBoard had been imploring mango farmers to register with this entity so that it could know which decision to take as far as importing mango is concerned. The public enterprise stated today that from its market analysis, it had established a total of three common varieties (of mango) produced by local farmers.
In the regulatory mandate of the organisation, it strives to ensure a balance in the demand and supply for fruits and vegetables, particularly mango in this instance. The organisation also stated that it was expected to assess the availability of produce from local farmers against the demand from local markets to be able to suspend the importation of certain commodities when there was a proven inadequate supply from local farmers.
That, according to NAMBoard, could only be done when there was a clear and reliable data available from the local farmers. Therefore, the need for local farmers to provide this data efficiently on EHIS was very critical.
