Posted on May, 3, 2019 at 09:55 am
By Alvar Mwakyusa - Daily News
ALTHOUGH Mbeya is one of the country's breadbasket regions, it remains with little appetite for available credit facilities in the agricultural sector.
The southern highland region had borrowed a mere 799m/- out of the Tanzania Agricultural Development Bank's (TADB) loan portfolio of 102bn/- as of March, this year, according to President John Magufuli.
Addressing a series of public rallies during his working tour of Mbeya Region yesterday, Dr Magufuli argued that Mbeya has huge potential for increased agricultural productivity, urging farmers in the region to access soft loans from TADB to boost production.
"It is high time farmers in Mbeya Region made use of credit facilities from the bank and invested heavily in crop cultivation," Dr Magufuli implored,appreciating the residents' hard work and bumper harvests.
He mentioned Kagera and Mwanza regions as the leading borrowers of TADB loans, having received 38.3bn/- and 11bn/-, respectively, as of March, this year.
The two leading cashew nut producing regions of Mtwara and Lindi collectively borrowed 33bn/- from the bank.
The Head of State emphasised further that the government had borrowed 110 million US dollars (about 253bn/-) from the government of Poland for local assembling of URSUS tractors at Kibaha in Coast Region and construction of silos to store grains in breadbasket regions.
Available statistics put post-harvest losses for locally produced food crops at between 37 and 40 per cent, with lack of storage facilities and poor transport networks to markets being the main factors behind the losses.
President Magufuli reiterated the government determination to establish agro-processing factories to add value to locally produced agricultural produce, charging that the factories will also provide reliable markets to farmers and create jobs for labourers in industrial units.
Addressing the public rally at John Mwakangale grounds in Kyela District, Dr Magufuli directed the Minister for Industry and Trade as well as his counterpart in the Agriculture docket to devise strategies to attract cocoa processing plant in the area.
"Kyela is the leading producer of cocoa in Tanzania and there is need to establish the factory for value addition of the beans, domestically," he stated, expressing delight on the other hand that the price of cocoa in Kyela has significantly increased from 800/- to 5,000/- per kilogramme.
Dr Magufuli, who was recently in neighbouring Malawi for a twoday state visit, urged residents from the two brotherly countries to seriously embrace cross-border trade to improve their incomes and eventually boost the economies of their respective countries.
He was equally upbeat that the envisaged One-Stop-Boarder-Post between Tanzania and Malawi will significantly improve cross-border trade between the two countries, which are also members of the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
"We (the government of Tanzania) have played our part by purchasing two cargo ships, which operate on Lake Nyasa while the passenger ship is under construction," Dr Magufuli told residents at Tukuyu Township.
In Rungwe District, President Magufuli laid the foundation stone for expansion and renovation of buildings at Puguso Teachers' Training College as well as construction of 16 houses for tutors and two dormitories with capacity to house 96 students.
The project will cost 9.6bn/-. The college, which currently can teach between 900 and 1,000 students, was established by colonialists in between 1925 and 1926 as an early education institution.
It was later elevated into the teachers' training college in 1970.
Source: Daily News