Despite many Malawians are poor who cannot afford to buy fertilizer and seeds for maize production as they benefit from Farm Input Subsidy program (Fisp), Malawi government has just reduced number of beneficiaries from 1.5 million to 900,000 in the 2016/17 agricultural season.

According to Spokesperson for the Ministry of Agriculture Hamilton Chimala has disclosed that sthe development follows a slash of K17 billion allocation to Fisp program in the 2016/17 budget by the ministry of finance

“In the budget, the minister allocated MK43 billion out of MK60 billion to the program and this will target only nine hundred thousand famers who are poor from rural areas of the country,” said Chimala.

The program was introduced in 2005 by late Bingu wa Mutharika in order to help poor farmers to access cheap farm inputs to earn food security and it was efficient in his era.

However, Fisp program became under criticism after some stakeholders depicted it to be unproductive in helping Malawi to be food secure which has paved less consideration to it in parliament recently.