Buying and selling of agricultural goods in Tanzania has always been an informal type of business, with unaccounted transactions and little if any records keeping.
Now, there is a new directive issued from Dodoma that all buyers of farm produce should do that through registered companies that keep ledger books, listed at the Tanzania Revenue Authority and with an official address.
The move, according to the officials, targets to formalize agricultural crops trading, improve transactions, protect local growers and regulate prices, in addition to create portals for overseas exports.
The Minister of Agriculture, Hussein Bashe said the rule also applies to foreigners who come to buy agricultural harvests in Tanzania.
He was speaking to farmers, agricultural produce dealers, farm input traders and other stakeholders of the industry who had gathered in Dodoma city to discuss proper ways of conducting business in the country.
“The new arrangement in crop business is being undertaken to stamp out dubious rackets in the agriculture sector where some unscrupulous traders and firms have been taking gullible farmers for a ride,” Bashe maintained.
Minister Bashe said all crop dealing companies and related entities must be registered and approved by the Ministry of Agriculture as well as other related Government agencies.
It was stated during the meeting that agricultural harvests have always commanded billions of money in their transactions, but farmers hardly benefit and most of them remain steeped in poverty.
Furthermore it seems like the government is being cheated out of its revenues because the trade between crop growers and dealers is done behind the scenes.
But Bashe quickly inserted a disclaimer, “We are not trying to prohibit, inhibit or undermine the business between farmers and their crop buyers, the move is just to keep everything under check to ensure that all parties and the state benefit from the sector.”
According to the Minister, Tanzania is also starting to register all privately owned grain storage facilities in order to find out how many silos are operating in the country and how much food the country is storing across the nation.
It is to ensure that the country is food sufficient before moving to export all harvests.
As it happens, Tanzania is working to ensure that the National Food Storage Authority (NFRA) is enabled to store an average of 3 million tons of reserves in a year.
Comments are closed, but trackbacks and pingbacks are open.