The Sunday News
Dumisani Nsingo, Senior Business Reporter
THE Grain Marketing Board (GMB) will next month introduce an electronic farmer wallet card which is expected to improve efficiency in the payment of grain deliveries and accessing of inputs by farmers.
GMB chief executive officer Mr Rockie Mutenha said the farmer wallet card system would be activated on 1 June.
“GMB will be introducing an electronic farmer wallet card. This is a biometric card that is meant to create an ecosystem, starting from accessing inputs under various Government- sponsored programmes right through to the payment of farmers,” said Mr Mutenha.
The whole process is fully-automated and integrated to the GMB’s Enterprise Resource Planning SAP (Systems, Applications and Products).
For instance a farmer who borrows inputs under the Command Agriculture Programme, instead of being issued with a manual voucher, the farmer is given an electronic voucher that would be loaded on his or her farmer wallet card.
“On drawing the inputs from GMB depots or selected agro-dealers, the farmers use the card and they are biometrically identified and a stop order is automatically created in the system. Upon delivery, the stop order is automatically recovered and the net balance is paid straight into farmer wallet card,” said Mr Mutenha.
He said the introduction of the electronic farmer wallet card was necessitated by numerous bottlenecks, which were faced by GMB when paying farmers.
“The introduction of the card was prompted by the fact that manual stop orders were taking too long to process and thus delaying payments to farmers. There were also a number of errors encountered with the manual system. Also a number of challenges were encountered on the payment side as some farmers would supply wrong banking details or accounts that have been dormant for some time. With this card, the account number is automatically generated in the system,” Mr Mutenha.
The card is also Zim-Switch enabled, hence the farmer would be able to transact with any bank and outlets that are Zim-Switch connected.
Mr Mutenha said all farmers intending to deliver grain should biometrically register at their nearest GMB depot.
“All farmers intending to deliver this year are expected to visit their nearest GMB depot and biometrically register or re-register for those farmers that have been dealing with GMB. This is very important for farmers that send drivers to deliver their grains. Farmers are therefore expected to complete forms at the depots as from 3 June 2019 to facilitate registration for the wallet card,” he said.
GMB has held meetings with all the country’s farmers’ representative bodies as part of its efforts to ensure the organisations disseminate information on the new innovation while other meetings with various stakeholders have been scheduled in the coming weeks.
@DNsingo
