Sorghum prices stabilise
What you need to know:
Good harvests of sorghum in most producing areas have attribute to increase supply of the product in many regions and hence lower prices have prevailed for a long period. In four month period wholesale prices for sorghum have remained the same while supply is now reaching many regions.
Dar es Salaam. Average wholesale sorghum prices stabilised in the past for months as supply improved, the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment data show.
A survey by The Citizen has also established that sorghum prices started to drop in May in Dar es Salaam due to increased supply.
They have remained low since July.
At Tandika, Kinondoni and Temeke-Double Cabin markets, the survey showed that wholesale prices for a 100-kilo bag of sorghum ranged from Sh40,000 to Sh70,000.
They were lower than Sh70,000- Sh100,000 on July 23 this year.
Retail prices of one kilo of sorghum fell to an average of Sh1,400 from Sh1,700 during the same period. Data from the ministry for November 23, show that prices have relatively remained low in many regions on Mainland Tanzania.
The lowest price of Sh25,000 was recorded in Kibaigwa, Dodoma while the highest price of Sh120,000 was registered in Geita.
The data show that due to increased supply 20 regions receive sorghum compare with 15 regions in July.
Tandika market chairman Mohamed Mwekya said supply was steady and prices had fallen.
According to him, the number of lorries offloading sorghum has risen to 10 a day currently, from five before.
The Bank of Tanzania’s economic review for October has reported that sorghum prices decreased countrywide to an average price of Sh76,052.5 in September 2018 from Sh88,864.3 in September 2017.
More recently, corn has replaced sorghum in some areas. It quotes researchers from the University of Witwatersrand Medical School in South Africa as believing that “the change of the staple diet of Black South Africans from sorghum to maize is the cause of the epidemic of squamous carcinoma of the esophagus”.
