There is a picture of a 50kg of what looks Red Seal roller-meal in an unnamed shop selling at an astronomical price of more than $500! This follows certain movements we observed in the market that suggested that speculative behaviour and price hiking was about to begin.

Mealie-meal

This follows the government’s announcement that it was going to remove subsidies on maize in the 2020 budget. The alleged reasons for doing this were:

  • To reduce government expenditure
  • Subsdies were not reaching the final consumers

While it sounded good on paper, in hindsight the move now appears illadvised and it’s likely to be very unpopular and cause a lot of problems in the market.

The Grain Millers Association of Zimbabwe is said to have written a letter circulating on social media. The letter tells retailers to settle for a price around $89/10kg.