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Stocks at Maputo’s Zimpeto wholesale food market are running low, with fewer supply trucks arriving since the end of last week.
On Monday and Tuesday, for example, no truck trucks arrived at the market which supplies many markets and shops in the capital and other provinces.
Yesterday morning, only six tomato trucks arrived from Catuane, Maputo province and four trucks carrying potatoes and onions from South Africa.
Moises Covane, market administrator, said that the market needed 40 tomato and 20 to 25 potato trucks a day to be fully stocked, and is not sure about the reasons for the lack of arrivals.
Covane suggests the distance of the market to the main farms nay be to blame. Before, he says,, hauliers used to source produce at farms near the border, but now they go to much more distant points.
As a result of low supply, the produce that does come into Zimpeto fetches high prices. Yesterday, 20 kg boxes of tomato cost 450.00 meticais and potatoes 300.00 meticais, with onions selling for between 220.00 to 260.00 meticais a 10 kg bag.
Vegetables apart, Zimpeto has had no beans and peanuts in the last few days, products that usually come from the north of the country. Covane attributes this to political and military instability affecting road traffic in the central provinces.
South Africa is a leading supplier of fresh products to Maputo province and city and is currently affected by its severest drought in recent times.
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