Posted on February, 9, 2022 at 06:04 am
Suppliers of subsidized farm inputs in the 2014/15 and 2015/16 seasons may soon be paid as a verification of their claims is now in final stages, the House heard on Monday.
The Deputy Minister for Agriculture Anthony Mavunde made the statement yesterday acknowledging that the government recognizes the arrears and was working to ensure that the suppliers are paid their dues.
According to him, the first verification was conducted and it was found that there was fraud in claims and thus it was decided to start afresh the verification exercise.
He was responding to a question asked by Jackson Kiswaga (Kalenga, CCM) who wanted to know when will the government clear payment arrears to the suppliers who spent much of their capital and time to serve farmers in the constituency.
Kiswaga said that the payment arrears have taken a long time, something which has affected economic development of the agents.
"Because the government decided to channel subsidized farming inputs such as fertilizer and seeds through the private sector fertilizer supply chain, made the distributors and agro-dealers to participate as they believed that such programme would increase their sales and income but also enable smallholder farmers access affordable farming inputs, but things weren't as expected as the suppliers have not been paid for over five years now," he explained.
The deputy minister said there no one who will be left behind as the verification exercise is set to be completed soon and all eligible suppliers will get their rights.
Source: Daily News