Huge sums of shillings spent for edible oil imports, says govt

Morogoro. Agriculture Deputy Minister Omary Mgumba says Tanzania has been spending billions of shillings for importing over 360 tons of edible oil.

Mgumba said this yesterday when opening a two-day-meeting of stakeholders of the palm crop in Morogoro Region. The meeting is under the financing of the Trade Mark East Africa (TMEA) institution in cooperation with Agricultural Seed Agency (ASA).

The minister said the palm crop had been facing different challenges including a lack of better seedlings and seeds, adding that the meeting of agriculture researchers and experts was a sure way of laying strategies and setting plans to ensure a solution to the issue was found.

He clarified that the demand for the edible oil by Tanzania was over 570,000 tons of the commodity from different crops producing edible oil including palm, simsim, sunflower and other crops of the similar nature.

“As a country, we have enough land for producing edible oil within the country. So, for us to meet here should bring about efficiency and professionally clarify those challenges and address them so to increase production,” said the deputy minister.