CUF wants over 10pc Tanzania budget allocation in agriculture

Dar es Salaam. Civic United Front (CUF) has advised the government to allocate more than 10 per cent of the 2018/19 budget to agriculture so that Tanzania can become a middle income by 2025.

Evaluating the 2018/19 proposed budget on Sunday, the party’s Leadership committee chairman Julius Mtatiro, said the budget presented in Parliament didn’t outline strategies for promoting agriculture and other integrated sectors such as fisheries, livestock keeping and tourism that employ many people.

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He said although agriculture employs more than 70 per cent of Tanzanians, it receives a frustrating share from the government budget and that in most cases less than two per cent of allocated funds released.

“The economy cannot grow if the government will not increase efforts and put in place strategies to stimulate growth of important sectors that employ the majority of Tanzanians,” he said adding,

“CUF expected that the budget would stipulate strategic plans on how to increase employment opportunities. On contrary, there is lack of management plans of key crops including cashew nuts that generated more than Sh1 trillion in the 2017/18 fiscal year.”

He noted that last year, the fishing sector received no funds at all from the government, noting that this year only Sh56 billion has been allocated which according to him wasn’t enough to develop the industry.

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Mr Mtatiro also pointed out that about one million Tanzanian youth enter the labor market annually, while the government and the private sector are able to saturate only 100,000 people per year.According to him, the budget has not taken all this not consideration.