The Common Market for Eastern and Southern African (COMESA) has said the threat to Zambian wheat producers is not coming from the regional group but from outside, The Post newspaper reported Friday.

COMESA Secretary General Erastus Mwencha was quoted as saying while the volume of imports of the commodity from COMESA is only about 200,000 U.S. dollars annually, volume from non-COMESA countries stands at nearly 17 million dollars.

Commenting on the concerns that cheap imports from COMESA countries are threatening Zambia's wheat flour production, he said that "considering that imports from South Africa alone stands at 3, 678,402 dollars, it is not fair to say that wheat from COMESA countries is posing a threat local production. The threat is coming from non-COMESA countries."

He said that among COMESA countries, wheat is mainly imported from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Mauritius and Malawi.

For non-COMESA countries, imported wheat to Zambia come from the United Arab Emirates, Belgium, Canada, China, Tanzania and the United Kingdom.

Over the past two weeks, local millers have refrained from buying locally produced wheat, a trend that has been attributed to a flood of cheap imports from COMESA countries,

But a local wheat distributor dismissed the argument as baseless, accusing the millers of brewing a conspiracy.

Source: Xinhua