By Kingsley Jassi:
Conglomerate Press Corporation Limited (PCL) has disclosed plans to venture into agricultural value chain investment amid the country’s efforts to recover the lost industrial capacity.
Through Press Agriculture, PCL used to anchor large scale commercial farming, feeding the then growing industries before the industrial melt down that was followed by the Press Agriculture’s hibernation.
Chief Executive Officer of PCL, Ronald Mangani was pressed on the conglomerate’s role in the country’s industrialisation efforts amid some critics that question low investment appetite by the local companies.
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However, Mangani started with a clarification that PCL does not own land for megafarm investment that it is expected to do, saying Press Agriculture – which has tens of thousands of hectares of idle farmland – was left in the hands of Press Trust.
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“There was a time when Press Corporation was listed at London Stock Exchange and one of the requirements was that the company should not be involved in primary production. So, Press Agriculture was left in the direct hands of Press Trust, and was no longer a subsidiary of PCL,” Mangani said.
He therefore disclosed that steps have now been taken to crawl back into the production sector, following the obvious need that the company observed in the structure of the economy but was quick to say there are several challenges that stand in the way.
At the moment, the conglomerate is investing in a 50 million megawatts at Nkhoma in Lilongwe, disclosing that financial closures are now being completed to pave the way for the $52.3 million project.
Mangani, who is a member of the Presidential Private Sector Council, further explained that through the council challenges are being identified and solutions jointly developed to unlock the existing investment potential.
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“There are significant constraints that local private sector players are experiencing, one of those is the high cost of finance and there are many other related challenges such as energy and most of these need concerted efforts by the private sector and government to address them,” said Mangani.
In a separate interview, Minister of Agriculture, Sam Kawale expressed the need for the country to transition from the dominant subsistence farming to commercial farming, which require investors like PCL to come in.
He however, acknowledged that the commercialisation and investment in the agriculture sector begs for structuring the markets across all industries in the sector.
“We are going to structure the markets one by one. Right now we’ve finished structuring the cotton industry and we will continue with that,” Kawale said.
