Kikwete okays warehouse receipts

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Jakaya Kikwete

President Jakaya Kikwete

The warehouse receipt system is here to stay and the government will protect it against any attempt to sabotage or kill it.

President Jakaya Kikwete made the remarks in Dar es Salam on  Tuesday at the launch of the International Cooperative year  commending the  system and stressing that it was beneficial to farmers.

The president also seized the opportunity to caution tobacco farmers of increasing pressure around the world  to abandon the cash crop due to its effect on human health. He urged tobacco stakeholders to brainstorm on a better option.

The president was also reacting to a request by the Chairman of the Tanzania Federation of Cooperatives (TFC), Mr Hassan Wakasuvi, who had urged the government to ensure politicians did not meddle with management of crop marketing committees which supervise the warehouse receipt system.

“The best way to make the system sustainable  is  to sell value-added agricultural produce,” said the president. He challenged cooperative unions to emulate the first powerful unions established in Kilimanjaro and Kagera regions at independence. Giving the history of the cooperative movement, the president said it was introduced in Tanzania in 1925, but wondered why many cooperative societies eventually collapsed.

“It is important that we seriously ask ourselves what happened to these treasures that we created and what should be done to reinstate their lost glory,” he observed. He commended TFC’s strategies to introduce investment plans, particularly the 20-storey tower in Dar es Salaam but regretted at the same time  that some of the cooperatives were considering selling their assets due to financial problems.

On setting up a  Cooperative Bank, the president challenged TFC to borrow a leaf from Kenya whose similar bank was formed by cooperatives in partnership with SACCOSs. He said today there are more 3,000 SACCOSs in the country with more than 1.5 million members and a total capital of more than 500bn/-.

The  SACCOSs  have managed to provide loans worth more than 700bn/- to their members by last year,  up from only 50bn/- in 2005.   The Deputy Minister for Agriculture, Food Security and Cooperatives, Eng Christopher Chiza, thanked the President for supporting cooperative  activities, adding that efforts were  underway to introduce  Cooperatives subject in schools.

The deputy minister said there were plans for the Cooperative Act to be translated in Kiswahili for TFC and SACCOS members to understand it. The Director of the International Labour Organization (ILO) office for Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda, Mr Alexio Musindo, said the UN is partnering with the government on various programmes, including capacity building. “Through the Challenge Fund Mechanism of the One UN Joint Programme, grants totalling 308,686 US Dollars (about 494m/-) have been provided to cooperative projects in Tanzania.

By PIUS RUGONZIBWA, Tanzania Daily News

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