Etunda feedlot fizzles out

By: BRIGITTE WEIDLICH

FUNDS from the European Union to set up a multimillion-dollar feedlot to get cattle slaughter ready at the Etunda irrigation scheme near Ruacana might be gone after Namibia dragged its feet for nearly four years.

The EU was prepared to provide N$13 million for the feedlot and Meatco, which was to run the feedlot, was keen to contribute another N$4 million.
In addition the Regional Council of the Omusati Region had told the Agriculture Ministry they didn’t want the feedlot at Etunda anymore, because that project was supposed to be only for crop irrigation, according to Agriculture Minister John Mutorwa.
“We did not want to lose the money [from the EU] entirely and the National Planning Commission at the end of last year proposed to upgrade quarantine camps and cattle pens, so we need not quarrel anymore about feedlots,” Mutorwa said at the start of a meeting with the Meatco Board of Directors yesterday.
Meatco on January 13 requested a meeting with Mutorwa to clear the air about several issues.
“The Omusati Regional Council in principle is not against feedlots, they support them to be built elsewhere and that will be a matter for the future. Nobody opposes them,” Mutorwa said.
Attempts were made to obtain comment from the EU yesterday, but the EU development officer was out of town.
“Time is running out and the funding might be possibly lost,” Joachim Knoth, head of the rural development section of the EU mission in Namibia, told The Namibian exactly a year ago.
“The EU agreed to fund N$13 million towards the feedlot so that at least 10 000 cattle would be sold to the feedlot and once slaughter ready they would be slaughtered at the Oshakati abattoir, which belongs to the Namibian Government,” Knoth said in 2009.
“Livestock owners in the northern communal areas would earn more income selling their cattle directly to the feedlot.”
The multimillion-dollar project was initiated by Namibia’s largest meat processor and exporter, Meatco, almost four years ago.
Meatco had applied for EU funding, which was agreed, and Meatco was to contribute an additional N$4 million.
The first hurdle that nearly derailed the feedlot was the refusal of the Omusati Regional Council in 2006 to make land available for the feeding pens at the existing Government irrigation and crop-production scheme at Etunda.
“The argument was that it was communal land,” a source from a development agency told The Namibian a year ago.
The previous Director General of the NPC, Helmut Angula, succeeded in convincing the Council to give its approval.
The Agriculture Ministry even wrote a letter in September 2007 that the Ministry permitted the use of the land for the feedlot and that Meatco had agreed to carry the costs of the water installation.
By December 2007, the N$13 million co-financing agreement between the European Commission and Meatco was signed at the NPC with EU Ambassador Dr Elisabeth Pape. The Agriculture Ministry was not a signing partner.
But during 2008 the Ministry changed its mind and according to sources wanted to own the future feedlot, with Meatco merely becoming the manager and agent to construct and run it.
An agreement defining Meatco’s changed status should have been signed in 2008 already and has been delaying the project.
Andrew Ndishishi, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry since 2007, told The Namibian last year the change was because the feedlot would be situated on “State land, which is communal land.”
According to Ndishishi, the total investment would abound N$48 to N$50 million.
“The change in the project that Government through our Ministry will set up the feedlot is because Meatco cannot raise that amount of money, they have N$4 million”, he told The Namibian then.

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