Cashews verification deadline looms

Dar es Salaam. Thousands of tonnes of cashew nuts worth billions of shillings have not been verified a mere two days before the government’s verification deadline for cashew traders and payments ends.

The minister for Agriculture, Japheth Hasunga, told Parliament in Dodoma on Saturday last week that the government – working through the Cereals and Other Produce Board of Tanzania (CPB) – had verified cashew nut consignments worth Sh442.9 billion in total. However, only Sh424.8 billion had been paid for the verified transactions.

Speaking to cashew nut stakeholders in Mtwara on January 27, 2019, Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa directed that the verification and payment exercises should be concluded by February 5 this year.

Premier Majaliwa told regional commissioners of the country’s cashew growing regions and the managing director of the Tanzania Agriculture Development Bank (TADB), Japheth Justine, in a January 16, 2019 video conference that Tanzania was projected to produce only 246,000 tonnes of cashew nuts in total during the 2018/19 farming season.

Putting all this in perspective, then one would be correct to surmise that, at the government purchasing price of Sh3,300 per kilogramme of cashew nuts, the total amount of Sh442.9 billion would be just enough for 134,212.12 tonnes.

This would then mean that at least 111,787.88 tonnes of the produce worth Sh368.9 billion (at Sh3,333/kilo) had yet to be verified.

When reached for clarifications on this yesterday, Mr Hasunga said he would issue fresh statistics on the trend of cashew nut sales in the Parliament today, Monday, January 04, 2019.

“I will be responding to a question on cashew nuts in Parliament tomorrow (today) – and that is when I will issue new data on (cashew nuts) sales, verification and payments,” he said.

But, The Citizen has been made aware that the government was yet to decide on thousands of tonnes of cashew nuts from farmers who had put up for sale more than 1,500 kilos of the produce – but had then failed to show ‘their’ farms from which the crop was harvested as part of the verification processes.

However, the deputy minister for Agriculture, Mr Omar Mgumba, told Mr Majaliwa during the stakeholders meeting in Mtwara that at least Sh792 billion had been allocated for cashew purchases until Friday, January 25, 2019 – and that Sh416 billion had already been paid out to cashew farmers!

According to the deputy minister, verification for cashews grown in the leading producing area, Tandahimba, had been done by 96 per cent, involving at least 37,000 tonnes of the produce.

Also, almost 73 per cent of all farmers’ payment claims in Ruvuma Region had been settled, compared with 83 per cent Mtwara Region, and 84 per cent in Lindi Region

In stark contrast, Mr Mgumba said, only 13 per cent of the farmers in the Coast Region had been paid for their cashew nut sales.