Posted on August, 30, 2021 at 09:56 am
Dar es Salaam. The Tanzania Agricultural Development Bank (TADB) and Pass Trust have reached a strategic partnership agreement aimed at stimulating youths and women farmers’ access to affordable loans.
With the goal of transforming agriculture, the two institutions will directly link and engage youth for sustainability of interventions geared to bolster the sector, TABD managing director Frank Nyabundege said in Dar es Salaam at the weekend during a meeting with his Pass Trust counterpart, Mr Yohane Kaduma.
“In an effort to create employment opportunities and support the country’s vision to create eight million jobs, Pass Trust has the confidence that agriculture is the sector that can make this possible,” said Mr Kaduma.
He also said that Pass Trust has developed the Agribusiness Innovative Centre (AIC) to impart agribusiness skills on the youth.
The two gentlemen also discussed future collaborations of their institutions in enhancing availability of capital for youth through the AIC.
“To enhance more youth involvement in the agri-sector, we are bound to provide them with skills, and ensure capital availability. This is a role that TADB is here to enhance,” Mr Nyabundege said.
The two institutions also discussed how they could create a favourable environment for more women to venture into agri-business. “Currently, we are seeing fewer women accessing agricultural loans due to collateral issues. Generally, women don’t own land, whereby men own ¾ of the land. With the partnership between TADB and Pass Trust, we can agree on how - through our guarantee schemes - more women can access financing. After all, they make over 60 percent of the labour force in the agri-sector,” Mr Kaduma stressed.
The two also agreed to increase their efforts in de-risking the agricultural sector for increased accessibility, inclusiveness and affordability of loans in the country.
Mr Nyabundege and Mr Kaduma also commended the already-established strategic partnership that has by far influenced the decrease in lending rates in agri-loans - and called on Tanzanians to fully exploit this opportunity.
TADB remains hopeful because during the last meeting of the Tanzania National Business Council (TNBC) held at the Dar es Salaam state house on June 26, this year, the Tanzania Private Sector Foundation (TPSF) asked the government to increase funding to the TADB and the Tanzania Investment Bank (TIB), as a way of boosting big investment projects.
Source: The Citizen