Africa-Press – Tanzania. THE National Food Reserve Agency (NFRA) is finalising process to begin construction of the agency’s headquarters in Dodoma’s capital city.
Set to commence in the current fiscal year, the headquarters to be constructed in Mahomanyika area, in the fringe of the capital city will consume at least 6.2bn/- upon its completion.
NFRA Chief executive officer (CEO), Dr Andrew Komba, told the “Daily News” at the end of the week that funds for the implementation of the vital project come from a total of 1.2tri/- budget that the NFRA set aside for running activities in the 2025/26 financial year.
He noted, the project entails construction of NFRA head office, ultramodern laboratory, a special mechanisation centre as well as other key departments, all under the same roof.
“Apart from increasing the NFRA’s visibility, the initiative focuses to improve our services delivery in ensuring national food security,” he said.
Dr Komba explained that during 2024/25 fiscal year, the NFRA conducted a thorough restructuring and improvement of the agency’s operating structure with an eye to transform it into a commercial – based entity.
“From now henceforth, NFRA will operate with a more commercial eye. We will continue working to ensure food security in the country through buying and reserving enough grains, whereby we will however, use the surplus food to market it to various neighbouring countries in need,” he informed.
He added that NFRA is currently marketing grains to Kenya, Zambia and Malawi, saying plans are equally afoot to expand the trade into Zimbabwe and DRC Congo.
“In this financial year the government gave us seven new staff as part to assist the NFRA to stabilise it services delivery.
“We’re now going to deliver our services in advanced quality through the adopted digital food tracking system, the cloud- connected system which is useful in terms of performing stock management and grains purchasing system through issuing goods received notes (GRN) to farmers,” he said.
From the set aside 1.2tri/- budget, the NFRA plans to accomplish an array of interventions to help heightening services delivery in the current fiscal year.
The projects that primarily aim at increasing the agency’s grains storage capacity to the tune of 1.1 million tonnes include the construction of new grains storage towers, silos and rehabilitation of the dilapidated ones.
“The project which expects to gobble up to 36.3bn/- will be implemented from the amount we received from the central government,” according to Dr Komba.
Renovation of the rundown grain storage facilities will impact the warehouses of Kipawa in Dar es Salaam and Mazwi in Sumbawanga.
“In this year’s grains purchasing season, the NFRA is looking forward to use 869bn/- to purchase 800,000 tonnes of maize, 150,000 tonnes of rice, as well as other tonnages of legume crops, sunflower and sugar,” added Dr Komba.
As per the set procedures, businesses wishing to enter into an agreement with NFRA must meet specific criteria, including having a valid tax clearance certificate and the capacity to supply at least 2,000 tonnes of white maize, white millet and/or rice.
Traders and farmers who do not meet the criteria for selling their grain at NFRA warehouses will still be able to sell their crops through the main NFRA warehouses or new purchasing centres to be opened by the agency, provided they have an agreement with NFRA.
With the current capacity to reserve a total of 776,000 tonnes of grains, NFRA operates 72 purchasing points across eight regions—Dodoma, Dar es Salaam (Kipawa), Njombe (Makambako), Songwe, Rukwa (Sumbawanga), Arusha (Babati), Shinyanga and Songea.
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