Posted on February, 21, 2018 at 09:15 am
Embu County Assembly has expressed concern over exploitation of local farmers by Uganda and Tanzania traders who are buying their produce at throw away prices.
The county assembly observed that there is a need for adding value to farm produces from Embu so as to fetch better markets locally and internationally.
The Members of the County Assembly thus adopted an Embu County government’s proposal for establishment of factories to process local farm produces.
The Members MCAs said construction of such value addition factories and industries will stem such exploitation of the desperate local farmers foreign traders for lack of somewhere to sell their produce at attractive prices.
The assembly thus approved the plan by the Embu County Government to set up factories to start processing bananas, mangoes green grams among other locally produced farm commodities in an ambitious value addition chain programme.
Speaking before adjourning for a two weeks break the MCAs lamented that traders from Uganda and Tanzania had invaded the area where they were importing farm produces from Kenya at throw away prices.
They thus unanimously adopted the report by the joint committees of Finance and Economic Planning and Budget and Appropriations Committee on the Annual County Integrated Development Plan (CIDP) 2017) where recommendations to initiate value addition projects are contained.
Source: The Star