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- The Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation, usually known as ADMARC, was formed in Malawi in 1971 as a Government-owned corporation or parastatal to promote the Malawian economy by increasing the volume and quality of its agricultural exports, to develop new foreign markets for the consumption of Malawian agricultural produce and to support Malawi's farmers. it was the successor of a number of separate marketing boards of the colonial-era and early post-colonial times, whose functions were as much about controlling African smallholders or generating government revenues as in promoting agricultural development. At its foundation, ADMARC was given the power to finance the economic development of any public or private organisation, agricultural or not. In its first decade of operation, ADMARC was considered to be more business-like and less bureaucratic than similar parastatal bodies in other African nations, but from its formation it was involved in the diversion of resources from smallholder farming to tobacco estates, often owned by members of the ruling elite. This led to corruption, abuse of office and inefficiency in ADMARC and, as the result of declining world tobacco prices, it had become insolvent by 1985. To obtain World Bank loans, ADMARC had to be partially privatised, but the neo-liberal economic policies imposed on it by the World Bank forced it to cut fertilizer subsidies, which contributed to severe food shortages in Malawi in 1992. Following the 1992 shortages, international aid donors demanded a return to multi-party politics by 1994, and President Banda, who had ruled since 1964, was peacefully removed from office during this transition. In the aftermath of these imposed changes, ADMARC's role was reduced to that of a buyer of last resort and to promoting food security by maintaining a strategic reserve of maize, to be created through domestic and foreign purchases. In 1996, the World Bank again intervened, criticising ADMARC's importation of maize as an unjustified subsidy, and requiring it to give up control of grain imports. ADMARC's record of promoting food security and maintaining a strategic reserve from domestic purchases after 1996 was patchy: its intervention prevented a famine in 1998, but financial pressures in 2000 and 2001 forced it to sell much of its maize reserves just before a poor harvest in 2002, resulting in food shortages and famine. A third round of World Bank intervention in 2002 forced ADMARC to reduce its financial losses by reducing its trading operations and to allow private sector competition. This market liberalisation had mixed results: ADMARC survived in a changed form, and by 2009 it was growing again. In 2003, ADMARC's legal form ceased to be that of a parastatal corporation following the repeal of the legislation that created it as such, becoming a Limited liability company, and it still exists because it has not been possible to create a comprehensive private-sector marketing system, However, ADMARC is criticised by donors as inefficient, wasteful and not sufficiently independent of government control. (en)
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| rdfs:comment
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- The Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation, usually known as ADMARC, was formed in Malawi in 1971 as a Government-owned corporation or parastatal to promote the Malawian economy by increasing the volume and quality of its agricultural exports, to develop new foreign markets for the consumption of Malawian agricultural produce and to support Malawi's farmers. it was the successor of a number of separate marketing boards of the colonial-era and early post-colonial times, whose functions were as much about controlling African smallholders or generating government revenues as in promoting agricultural development. At its foundation, ADMARC was given the power to finance the economic development of any public or private organisation, agricultural or not. (en)
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