Tanzania: Opposition Asks for Increased Agri Budget to Combat Food Shortage
Posted on :Tuesday , 21st February 2017
Dar es Salaam — The opposition Alliance for Change and Transparency (ACT-Wazalendo) yesterday advised the government to increase the budget for agriculture inputs and irrigation projects to combat food shortages in the country.
The party faulted the government for slashing agricultural input subsidy from Sh78 billion in 2015/16 to Sh10 billion in the current financial year.
ACT-Wazalendo Secretary for Social Development Janeth Rithe told journalists that the decision was partly to blame for low productivity in the agriculture sector.
"Available data shows that Tanzania is among the countries that don't make full use of agricultural inputs. To make matters worse, the government has slashed funding. This is a betrayal of farmers and should be rectified as a matter of urgency in the 2017/18 Budget," she said.Sponsored
The party also said the government should allocate enough funds for irrigation projects following inadequate rains experienced from late last year.
"We now have to walk the talk on irrigation farming in the country...rains are becoming more and more unpredictable. We can't continue to bank on traditional ways of farming to feed the entire country."
Ms Rithe urged the government to build more warehouses to stock food and increase funding for the National Food Reserve Agency (NFRA).
She said although the government said in Parliament recently that there was no need for alarm, the Bank of Tanzania's Monthly Economic Report for January 2017 indicates that food crops are still being sold at relatively high prices.
"According to the report, the average wholesale price for maize, which is a staple for the majority of Tanzanians, was 30 per cent higher in December 2016 than in December 2015. We also conducted our own study on food prices in eight regions from January and established that prices are still high and out of the reach of poor Tanzanians. More than 50 districts are facing food shortages. We have yet to get reports of people dying of hunger, but the government shouldn't wait for that to happen."
The party also urged President John Magufuli to at least declare that country was facing a drought. Debate has been raging since last December on food availability and whether the country is in the grip of a drought.
The Minister of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, Dr Charles Tizeba, told Parliament recently that 1,186,028 people in 55 municipalities were facing food shortage and the government planned to distribute 35,000 tonnes of relief food between February and April to address the situation. He warned that there was the possibility of various parts of the country getting inadequate rains in this year, adding that this could further hit food production.
"We might not attain our production targets. The production of seeds will also go down and there is a high possibility that prices of some food crops will go up," Dr Tizeba said.
He, however, told Parliament that the government was working to mitigate some of the effects, including by supplying 1,969 tonnes of drought resistant seeds in the worst affected areas by the end of February.
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