All cashews to be paid for by Jan 31

Dar es Salaam. The government has said it will ensure that all cashew nut farmers would have received payment for the produce it bought from them the end of this month. The news will raise hopes among farmers in cashew-growing regions who have been complaining of delayed payments for over two months now.

President John Magufuli said on November 12, 2018 that the government would purchase all cashew nut stocks from farmers at the minimum price of Sh3,300 per kilo through the Tanzania Agricultural Development Bank (TADB).

The decision was reached after the state issued a four-day ultimatum to traders to buy cashew nuts at the fiat price. This was after farmers rejected lower prices which were set by dealers.

However, data released on January 16, 2019 showed that the government would have to more than triple the amount it pays to farmers on a daily basis if all farmers were to receive their payment by month end.

The data was released soon after Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa held a video conference with Lindi and Mtwara regional commissioners, and TADB managing director Japheth Justine. Until Wednesday, last week, TADB had paid a total of Sh306 billion to 156,000 cashew nut farmers.

The amount represents 44 per cent of the 206,000 tonnes of cashew nuts that were in government warehouses until Wednesday last week. This means that cashew nuts weighing 113,300 tonnes had not been paid for as of Wednesday, last week. To put it in perspective: this suggests that farmers are yet to receive a total of Sh373.89 billion out of the already collected cashew nuts.

That amount is likely to rise – considering that the government estimates that close to 40,000 tonnes more, costing the it up to Sh132 billion, will still be required.

At the centre of the payments delay is the ongoing verification exercise whereby any farmer who supplies cashew nuts weighing more than 1.5 tonnes in total (1,500 kilograms) is required to show the farm from which the produce was harvested.

But Agriculture minister Japhet Hasunga says that – past delays in payments notwithstanding – all farmers will have their monies paid to them in ten days from today (Monday, January 21).

“The government will complete paying farmers by January 31, this year. We assured the Premier even before he issued directives that both verification and actual payment will be completed this month,” the minister stressed.

He said the pace of payments has since been hastened so much that until Friday last week (January 18), farmers in 605 Agricultural Marketing Co-operative Societies (Amcos) had been verified, and some of the farmers across 603 Amcos had received their money as of the same date.

Mr Hasunga, however, said the government had not yet made a decision on whether or not to pay for cashew nuts claimed by 8,760 farmers who failed to show where their farms were located after each of them produced over 1,500 kilos of the crop for sale.

“In the process of verification, we have so far managed to subject a total of 9,731 farmers to this process after each of them brought over 1,500 kilos of the crop for sale. However, only 893 farmers proved ownership of farms from where the crop was harvested to the verification teams. The remaining ‘farmers’ have not yet done so,” he said.

Speaking during the video conference last week, Premier Majaliwa asked TADB to hasten the pace of payments to farmers.

“You must quicken the pace of payments even as we continue with the verification process so that in the end, only credible farmers get paid,” he stressed.

According to Mr Justine, at least Sh11 billion of what had already been approved for payment to farmers as of Wednesday last week could not be paid due to differences in the information that some farmers had availed to the commercial banks involved.

“In some cases, names of the people who brought the cashew nuts were different from the bank account names of the farmers,” he said.