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Market Share Promotion on track

Since its inception in 2005, results of the Market Share Promotion (MSP) has shown that in the 2010/ 2011 financial year of the Namibian Agronomic Board (NAB), 7443 tonnes of locally produced fresh fruit and vegetables was produced for the local market while 35,558 tonnes were imported, indicating a difference of 28,115 tonnes.
The Market Share Promotion (MSP) is a concept that revolves around being able to substitute importing commodities that can be cultivated locally and relies heavily on the cooperation of traders of fresh produce to buy Namibian first before resorting to importing from outside the borders.
In the 2012/ 2013 reporting period, 19,743 tonnes were produced locally and 31,927 tonnes of fresh produce were imported, reducing our dependance to 12,455 tonnes of imported produce.
“The purpose of enforcing the MSP is to promote the sale of locally produced fresh fruit and vegetables in Namibia by potentially restricting the direct importation of these products by traders,”said Fidelis Mwazi, National Horticulture Manager at the NAB.
Mwazi was speaking at a recent Sustainable Ecological Crop and Horticulture Conference on the importance of increasing the local production of fresh produce held in Rundu. Addressing the delegates, Mwazi’s presentation focused on the MSP in facilitating the demand for local production of horticulture fresh produce in Namibia.
The implementation of the MSP requires that all importers of horticulture fresh produce, including wholesalers, catering companies and retailers or traders, buy a certain minimum percentage of Namibian cultivated produce in a given quarter. When the MSP was introduced, the minimum percentage was just 5% but it has grown steadily to its current level of 39%.
The top crops that are currently contributing to the basket that traders who comply with the MSP currently purchase are, amongst others, potatoes, onions, butternuts, carrots, cabbage, mushrooms, lettuce, tomatoes, English cucumbers, watermelons and sweet melons.According to Mwazi, the ideal MSP for Namibia is 60% and added that the country was making progress towards achieving that percentage.
“We will never be able to achieve 100% of MSP because we will always import commodities such as apples for instance. Our climate simply is not conducive to producing certain crops and these will always be imported,” Mwazi conluded.

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