Huambo - The director of the Guild of Traders and Corn Producers of Angola (Epungu) in Huambo, Monteiro Daniel Chissoca, complained, on Thursday, about the lack of bank financing for the recovery of long-standing silos in Caála, Chicala-Cholohanga, Huambo and Longonjo.
Monteiro Daniel Chissoca said that these silos played a fundamental role in storing corn for the national food reserve between 1960 and 1990s.
At the time, these properties were supplied with cereals, in particular corn, sold in São Tome and Príncipe, Cape Verde, Mozambique, Macau and other former Portuguese colonies, to guarantee the sustainability of economic life.
Speaking to ANGOP, Monteiro Daniel Chissoca informed that, between 1999 and 2002, the institution had support from the Department of Agriculture and had the prospect of reactivating the silos next to the Lobito Corridor, with the capacity to store more than 30 tons of cereals, however was unsuccessful in the initiative.
He said that, although the walls are intact, the silos with warehouses around them require complete rehabilitation and equipment from the stolen and vandalized equipment over the years, and the search for financing is already known to government authorities.
He considered that the inoperability of these infrastructures makes the participation of small and medium-sized farmers, as well as peasant families, weak in guaranteeing the country's food reserve and in preserving large quantities of corn with the highest possible quality, both for farmers and for long-term consumption.
Monteiro Chissoca predicts that with the reactivation of the silos it will be easier to support peasants from the cultivation, treatment, harvesting and marketing phase, in addition to the conservation of corn, which is one of the priorities of the Grémio do Huambo management.
He lamented the reduction in corn production by small and medium-sized producers, resulting from the rise in the prices of fertilizers, quality seeds and other natural phenomena, a fact that increases the costs of marketing this cereal.
The Guild of Corn Traders and Producers of Angola (Epungu) in Huambo province currently has 250 members.
Until 1975, the institution was called the Guild of Merchants and Explorers of Angola, which in the past supplied corn stored in the silos of Caála, Chicala-Cholohanga, Huambo and Longongo, the national market and the then Portuguese colonies in Africa (São Tomé, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde). MLV/JSV/ALH/DOJ
