TADB’s Director of Credit and Business Development, Robert Pascal, told Smart Money on Monday that the beneficiaries of the credit will be farmers from smallholder farming groups in the region’s four districts of Kilombero, Kilosa, Malinyi and Ulanga.
“In a bid to help the farmers benefit from those funds, presently TADB’s business development team is visiting Morogoro Region to meet with the small-scale farmers,” he said.
The main goal is just to see what they do, their needs, the main challenges facing them in agriculture so that TADB can begin to issue the loans, Pascal said. The team was in Morogoro in February this year to inspect businesses for possible financing, he added.
While in Morogoro, they met 25 groups engaged in paddy production and visited 10 irrigation schemes under the Big Results Now (BRN) initiative.
“After their visit of those areas where they had face-to-face discussions with the farmers, the team identified that there are more potential smallholder farming groups for financing. Most of the groups are in need of loans for their agricultural activities,” he said.
In a bid to help farmers benefit from those funds, on Tuesday TADB organized a one-day workshop for 314 representatives and leaders from different smallholder farmers’ groups comprise 24,316 farmers in the region.
The workshop was held at Ifakara township and participants were from Ulanga, Malinyi, Kilosa and Kilombero districts.
Among the smallholder farmers’ groups, 17 smallholder farmers comprising 8,415 members are engaged in the production of sugarcane which they supply to Kilombero Sugar Company.
The remaining 230 smallholder farmers’ groups comprising 15,946 members are engaged in paddy production.
Leaders and representatives were from Marketing Infrastructure Value Addition and Rural Financing (MIVARF), Women in Social Entrepreneurship (WISE), Kilombero Sugar Company, Kilombero Plantation Limited, Nation Irrigation Commission (NIC), Tanzania Cooperative Development Commission (TCDC ) and three district councils.
The main objective of the workshop was to train the farmers on how to use loans properly and for the intended purposes, finance management, financing model and inform them on the products and services offered by the bank.
Other objectives include to agree with the facilitating partners, the proposed model for working together in financing the smallholder farmers, meet with 247 smallholder farmers’ groups for capacity building on how to use loans for the intended purposes and possible financing.
Others were to collect required loan application documents for eligible smallholder farmer organisations as per the roadmap and discuss the main challenges facing smallholder farmers in what they grow.
Each stakeholder was required to do a presentation on how the organisation supports smallholder farmers.
The area covered were the role of National Irrigation Commission in supporting smallholder farmers in the development of irrigation in agriculture, the challenges facing smallholder farmers in accessing markets and market information on agricultural produce.
Others were the importance of using appropriate inputs in increasing crop productivity, the advantages of contract farming in creating reliable market to smallholder farmers as well as the registration requirement and process for smallholder farmers’ groups to register a trustee.
Also discussed was the support and services provided by district councils to smallholder farmer groups (e.g. registration process, extension services and other issues).
TADB is a government institution established under the Companies Act, 2002 and licensed under the provisions of the Banking and Financial Institutions Act No 5 of 2006 and the Banking and Financial Institutions (Development Finance) Regulations, 2012.
The government decided to establish the bank to address the bottlenecks facing the agricultural sector and enhance access to credit in order to facilitate transformation of the agricultural sector in the country.
TADB is bestowed with two main goals to facilitate attainment of sustainable food self-sufficiency and food security in Tanzania, and to promote and support transformation of agriculture from subsistence to commercial undertaking.
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