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Precious Manomano, Herald Reporter
Officials from the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development on Thursday raided Spar Supermarket at Fife Avenue Shopping Centre in Harare and took several trolleys of snowflake self-raising wheat flour allegedly smuggled from South Africa.
The senior Agricultural economist in the ministry Mr Simbarashe Masanga said business people must apply for import permits so that they operate freely.
“We cannot issue permits for these products because the idea is that we understand that there is a substantial amount of flour in the country, a lot of local brands that can compete easily but due to the illegal nature of these products, this will pose a negative competition on our local products because it is not paying duty,” he said.
“To bring sanity to the agricultural marketing space we have to do these raids once in a while.”
The operation is expected to be cascaded to all provinces. A fine for selling goods without import permits is US$1 100.
Online Reporter