Govt Goes for Indicative Prices in Farm-Input

Farm input

The government says it has suspended the issuance of agro-input vouchers in the next farming season. In its place, it will introduce a procedure, whereby it will place orders for agricultural inputs and set indicative prices that will reduce fertilizer costs by 30 per cent.

This was revealed early in the week by the deputy minister for Agriculture, Irrigation and Cooperatives, Mr William Ole Nasha, in Vwawa Town, Mbozi District, when launching a project on involving youth in agriculture and livestock sectors.

The six-year-project, which started in 2016 under the financing of the Heifer International Organisation, will cover Mbeya, Njombe, Iringa and Songwe regions up until 2021.

"In implementing this, we will start with two kinds of fertilizers, DAP and Urea, which are widely used. A farmer will purchase them as much as he likes contrary to input subsidy vouchers that enabled the farmer to get only a bag of fertilizer," he said.

He said the programme had also the advantage of placing orders for fuels and would not give a chance to racketeers to hike prices.

According to Songwe RC Chiku Galawa, her region has 24,266 households that engage in agriculture.

She said a total of 3,543,924 hectares are under cultivation, hence over 70,000 tonnes of fertilizers are needed. Previously farmers only got 4 per cent of subsidy vouchers.

The RC clarified that a big section of farmers in the region were using fertilizers, adding that subsidies were not enough to attain production goals.

For his part, the Mbozi MP, Mr Pascal Haonga, explained that groups of youth failed to engage in farming because of exorbitant prices of inputs.

A farmer, Hamisi Hankungwe from Wellu Village, said the decision was timely as they did not benefit from the voucher system. "The government should supervise well this plan of indicative prices so that it can benefit the targeted group," he said.