The secretariat for agriculture said this evening that its reform of the pitkali vegetable market would continue now that a court had dismissed a challenge to the new requirement that middlemen need to submit a bank guarantee.
It said the guarantee was needed to ensure that farmers were paid on time.

The reform, the secretariat said, was aimed at guaranteeing transparency, accountability and standards in the interests of farmers and consumers.

The challenge was made by a number of middlemen who said a new legal notice which obliged them to fork out 10 per cent of their annual turnover misunderstood the very nature of their role between the farmer and the buyer.

Lawyer Edward Gatt has argued in court that the legal notice risked eradicating the traditional pitkala middlemen by changing their role completely.

It overlooked the fact that the pitkala were paid an eight per cent commission on the money earned by the farmer, after helping get the best price for the sale of the fruit and vegetables.

Therefore it did not make sense that the new legal notice asked them to fork out 10 per cent of the earnings "from the sale of agricultural produce". The key element, he said, was that they did not actually sell the produce.