Alarm over shortage and cost of maize flour

• Price of staple meal has shot up in the last one week and is too high for the poor

An acute shortage of maize flour is looming in the country after its cost doubled in the past one week and shops started rationing the commodity.

On Sunday, shortage of the staple, retailing at Sh120 per packet, started to bite across the country.

In December last year, a two-kilogramme packet of maize flour cost Sh48. Last week, the packet was being sold for between Sh80 and Sh85.

Prime Minister Raila Odinga on Sunday blamed the shortage on poor harvests and high food prices in the international market.

The minister for Agriculture, Mr William Ruto, said the shortage was artificial and blamed millers whom he accused of refusing to buy maize directly from farmers.

However, Kenya Association of Manufacturers chairman Vimal Shah said there was no maize in the market. He asked the Government to allow millers to import maize to reduce the shortage.

Even as the Government and millers differed over who was to blame for the shortage, a consumer organisation has called for the introduction of price controls to ensure that the flour, which is used to make the staple ugali meal, remains affordable to the poor.

About 46 per cent of Kenyans live on less than Sh140 a day, which means they can barely afford to buy a packet of maize flour.

“We know it is a free market economy, but there should be a mechanism to ensure consumers do not continue to be exploited,” said Ms Dorcas Kamunya of Consumer Information Network.

Rationing

In Nairobi, some supermarkets were rationing the number of packets that their customers could buy. In one supermarket, customers were not allowed to buy more than five packets.

In other parts of the country, consumers rushed to buy and stock the staple in anticipation of a further shortage.

Major outlets in the city told the Nation that there has been a low supply of the product over the last few days.

A spot-check at Nakumatt Supermarket branches in Nairobi revealed that the largest chain-store in the country had no maize flour.

Nakumatt Holdings operations director Thiagarajan Ramamurthy said millers who supply the chain had no maize to produce flour. He, however, said some of the millers had promised to make some deliveries on Monday.