RATIN

Govt Cites High Price of Inputs As a Snag

Posted on October, 12, 2016 at 09:54 am


By Alex Malanga

Dar es Salaam — The slow growth of agriculture is mainly a result of high costs of fertilizers and other farm inputs, a cabinet minister said yesterday.

The sector registered a 3.2 per cent growth during the second quarter of the current calendar year, a slight improvement from the 1.9 per cent that was registered during a similar period last year, according to National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) figures.

Economists believe that in a largely agrarian country like Tanzania, agriculture has to grow at a faster speed if the gorgeous macroeconomic growth rates are to have an impact on poverty reduction.

Speaking in Dar es Salaam yesterday, the Minister for Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries Development, Mr Charles Tizeba said the potential that the country had in the sector was not fully explored due to unaffordable prices of fertilizers.

"I wonder why prices of fertilizers are so high despite the global fall in costs of production," he told over 250 participants to a three-day 'Africa Fertilizer Agribusiness Conference' which began in Dar es Salaam yesterday.

He said the government was investigating the matter with a view to coming up with the best way of making fertilizer affordable to farmers and hence stimulate production.

According to him, farmers in Tanzania were using 19 kilogram of fertilizer per hectare as opposed to an average of 50 kilogram of the same that is recommended by experts.

As a result, yields remain low.

"I believe that if we lower the prices of fertilizer, our economy can grow by up to 12 per cent," he said.

Source: The Citizen