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AMA set to bounce back: Gumbo
GOVERNMENT is set to re-establish the Agricultural Marketing Authority once the exercise to put in place various parastatal boards has been completed, a Cabinet minister has said.
In a speech read on his behalf at the 13th annual congress of the Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers' Union in Mutare recently, Agriculture Minister Mr Rugare Gumbo said as soon as candidates for the boards of five other parastatals were appointed, AMA would bounce back.
The parastatals are Agribank, Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board, Tobacco Research Board, the Pig Industry Board and the Agricultural Research Council.
Over the past few months and in measures intended to revive the performance of parastatals, Government has appoint-ed boards for the Agricultural and Rural Development Authority led by Dr Tobias Takavarasha, the Grain Marketing Board headed by Mr Charles Chikaura and the Cold Storage Company under the leadership of Professor Lindela Ndlovu.
Surge in tea, apparel exports
COLOMBO: The trade deficit in July narrowed 35.1 per cent from a year earlier to 225 million dollars in July as clothes and tea exports surged, according to official data released yesterday. July imports rose 6.2 per cent to 915.5 million dollars year-on-year while exports climbed 33.9 per cent to 690.5 million dollars, driven by higher sales of clothes, tea and vegetable cooking oil, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka said. For the January-to-July period, the deficit has shrunk 15.6 per cent from a year earlier to 1.8 billion dollars, helped by a 3.9 per cent drop in the import oil bill, the bank said. The fall in the oil bill in the seven-month period has been helped by price hedging which the Government introduced in February. A jump in international oil prices has strained the economy which has no crude oil reserves of its own.
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