Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa was quoted as telling the National Assembly in Dodoma on Thursday that the government was set to remove all levies and tariffs imposed on coffee, tobacco and cotton after successfully doing the same for the cashew crop.
Having realized it was wrongly mistreating farmers, the government’s move to scrap the levies is geared to ensuring that farmers of the said crops benefited from their hard work.
A nuisance is something offensive or irritating to an individual or a community, especially in violation of their legal rights. It means something which causes offence, annoyance, trouble or injury.
It should be noted that farmers had only one ‘offence’ – to engage in farming where they would get produce as a result of hard labour, only to be troubled by their own government. We commend the government for such initiative that will provide greater relief to farmers.
We acknowledge that it was quite irritating for the government to prevent farmers of the said crops across the country from fully enjoying their hard-earned cash and instead treating them as offenders.
It’s for this reason that we commend the government for the decision well taken. Before the government’s decision, farmers were subjected to a 15 per cent levy on the value of the sold crop, depending on the global prices of the day.
Although the PM explained that the 15 per cent levy was not charged directly to farmers, the fact remains that it was being charged, regardless the mode of charging. It should be removed because it has been frustrating farmers.
We further commend this move as we have noted that there is strong political will in resolving this matter, as the PM promised to handle it personally by travelling across the country to ensure it was effected.
The government has taken the right direction in supporting farmers. It should be noted that by supporting them, the government will be supporting its own development initiatives by boosting the economy.
Notably, as the pillar of both domestic and export economy, the agricultural sector in the country engages 80 per cent of the labour force. Agriculture is the country’s economic mainstay, contributing $13.9bn to the country’s GDP - nearly 30 per cent, and 67 per cent of total employment during 2014, according to the World Bank’s (WB) crop production index.
As noted above, the country’s main export cash crops are tobacco, cashew nuts, coffee, tea, cloves, cotton, and sisal. Raw tobacco represents the country’s most important export cash crop, growing to $318m in 2015 from $169m worth of exports in 2010, followed by cashews which grew to $201m from $50m and coffee to $162m from $109m in the same period.
The top export destinations of the Tanzanian tobacco are Germany, Russia, and Poland, while almost 80 percent of cashews are exported to India. The country’s agriculture value-added net output increased by 61 per cent during the period 2009–2014, to $13.8bn from $8.6bn exceeding by 5 per cent the growth of value-added agricultural output in Sub-Saharan Africa during the same period.
Indeed, the government’s decision to change its approach to farmers will not only be helpful to farmers, but will also generate a new momentum for economy-oriented agribusiness that would lead to significant economic gains.
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