TCDC to hold meeting of stakeholders in Dar City

Dar es Salaam. The Tanzania Cooperative Development Commission (TCDC), in collaboration with the Tanzania Federation of Cooperatives (TFC), wants stakeholders to air their views on the best way to develop the sector.

The new TCDC chairman, Mr Abdumajid Nsekela, said in Dar es Salaam yesterday that in light of the need to collect views from all players, they will hold a meeting on February 27 to deliberate on the matter.

Mr Nsekela, who doubles as CRDB Bank Plc’s managing director, was appointed by President Samia Suluhu Hassan to become the new TCDC chairman in August last year (2022) as part of the President’s efforts to strengthen the Public-private Partnership (PPP) and bring private sector thinking to the government.

Mr Nsekela said yesterday that the meeting, to be held at CRDB Bank Plc headquarters in Dar es Salaam, aims to bring together all the key stakeholders so that they discuss ways of developing cooperatives and set a strategy to strengthen the sector in the country.

“TCDC is determined to improve the cooperative system to be more commercial and modern in order to increase the participation of citizens in various sectors and increase the sector’s contribution to fighting poverty as well as improving the country’s economy,” said Mr Nsekela.

He said the Commission was making efforts to establish a digital system to increase the efficiency of cooperative societies and strengthen the institutions that are involved in the management of cooperatives. It was also providing education on the concept of cooperatives in order to increase the participation of various sectors other than agriculture and speed up the process of establishing the National Cooperative Bank.

“The meeting will also discuss marketing systems, the management and use of cooperatives’ assets, and ways of running them [cooperatives] commercially,” he said.

The resolutions of the meeting will have to be properly implemented by every stakeholder, he said.

For his part, the TCDC Registrar, Dr Benson Ndiege, Dr Benson Ndiege, said that in recent years there has been a great improvement in the cooperative sector, which has led to an increase in the scope of cooperatives in various sectors, an increase in capital in cooperatives, and an improvement in the collection of Government revenue, especially in the agriculture sector, whereby levies for 12 crops are collected through cooperatives.

For the years 2021/2022, the government received a total of Sh15.14 billion as levies for the cashews paid by cooperatives, namely Tanecu, Mamcu, Runali, Lindi Mwambao, Tamcu, and Corecu. Also, a total of Sh1.04 billion was received by the local government authorities as levies from the KDCU and KCU Cooperatives through the coffee crop.