RATIN

WB: Agriculture sector on track

Posted on December, 5, 2019 at 10:13 am


 
THE recent signs of transformation in Tanzania’s agricultural sector offer encouraging opportunities for acceleration of growth, job creation and poverty reduction, according to a new World Bank report.
 
Dubbed the 13th Tanzania Economic Update-Transforming Agriculture, the report highlighted that several factors have been driving the demand side for at least a decade, quietly laying the groundwork for transforming Tanzanian agriculture.
 
Along with these demand trends, there has been a significant change on the supply side, especially the proliferation of medium-sized farms in Tanzania, from 23 per cent of all farmland holdings in 2008 to 35 per cent in 2014.
 
The report shows that the 368,000 medium-scale farms added in Tanzania between 2008 and 2014, created 13 million days of additional work annually for hired workers, and 225– 300 million USD in net backward and consumer links.
 
Speaking in Dar es Salaam yesterday during the report’s launch, the World Bank Country Director to Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe, Ms Bella Bird said that even though Tanzania’s agriculture shows promising signs, and more reforms are underway, progress will need to be scaled-out to meet high national targets for overall growth, poverty reduction, and resilience to climate change.
 
Overall, she said Tanzania’s macro economic performance remains sound, growth is robust, inflation is low and stable as well as exports showing signs of a rebound while growth continues to be strong, their assessment shows that the povertyreducing impact has reduced.
 
“For Tanzania to speed up the agricultural transformation process, it should increase the quality and pace of needed policy reforms to make a business environment for agriculture more profitable and predictable,” she noted, adding: “We congratulate the government of Tanzania for improving the environment for agribusiness, by implementing local and national fiscal reforms, including removal of over 100 agriculture fees and taxes and limiting the use of export bans; a huge step forward.”
 
Ms Bird said the edition highlights WB’s perspective on the key economic challenges to Tanzania’s medium-term prospects and ways the government can crowd in more private investment in agriculture to make it a real engine of growth and poverty reduction.
 
“The WB produces economic updates in many of our member countries including Tanzania; the updates present our independent assessment of the economy and a special topic on an issue important to realising Tanzania’s development aspirations,” she remarked.
 
She further cited increasing public investments in agricultural public goods such as roads, water infrastructure, rural electricity, research, extension, grades and standards, necessary to drive private investments— including those of smallholders—to the levels required for overall growth.
 
The Tanzania Economic Update series is published twice yearly, featuring two sections – one, an overview of the economy’s recent performance and outlook; and the second one focusing on a topic of strategic significance to the country’s development.
 
Source: Daily News