Bank of Tanzania: Cashew exports stand at 40pc

Dar es Salaam. Tanzania has so far exported a relatively paltry 90,000 tonnes of cashew nuts stock for the 2018/19 season, a Bank of Tanzania (BoT) report shows.
The quantity is about 40 per cent  of the 225,000 tonnes of cashew nuts harvested during the previous season. The amount of earnings, however, has not been disclosed.
But, the acting director general, of the Cashewnut Board of Tanzania (CBT), Mr Francis Alfred, played down the central bank’s export figure, stressing they have exported more than what the bank reports.
“Until today, we had exported a total of 114,626 tonnes of the crop,” he told The Citizen on the sidelines of the 13th Africa Cashew Stakeholder Forum held in Dar es Salaam yesterday. This would mean that a total of 24,626 tonnes were exported in October.
However, The Citizen’s revisit  of BoT’s monthly economic reviews from March to September this year did not find any data showing the crop’s exports.
The low cashew exports also lowered the country’s traditional exports earnings. The report shows that they declined to $563.5 million during the year that ended on September 30 this year, down from $1,160.8 million in the corresponding period in 2018. “Cashew nuts exports decreased owing to a fall in prices in the world market and export volumes due to delays in exporting after the government’s intervention to safeguard farmers’ earnings,” the October review stated.
In the 2017/18 season, Tanzania earned $575 million (Sh1.3 trillion) from cashew nut exports: equivalent to the value of all cash crop exports including tea, coffee, tobacco and cotton.
On September 21, Agriculture minister Japhet Hasunga told Reuters that the government had eventually sold the 2018/2019 produce to a Vietnamese firm, but would allow private traders to resume buying in the 2019/20 season.
Auctions of cashew nuts harvested during this season started in different regions of Tanzania Mainland last week, although  the sold quantities have yet to be revealed.
Meanwhile, Mr Hasunga outlined five strategies, which would be implemented to boot the crop’s output in the next four years. The government is looking forward to increasing  cashews production to one million tonnes by 2023.
To achieve the goal, they will digitalize  cashew  purchases, improve production conditions and increase local processing capacity to 90 per cent of all harvests from currently 20 per cent. Tanzania produces some 250,000 tonnes per season.
“From next year, we will sell raw cashews through the commodity market to enable buyers to buy without physically being present in Tanzania,” he said.
Other measures include adoption of contract farming, as well as plantation farming.
The acting director general of Naliendele Agriculture Research Institute, Dr Fortunatus Kapinga, said the institute has the capacity to produce the required cashew seedlings for boosting production.