AfricaPress-Tanzania: THE National Development Corporation (NDC) has urged small-scale farmers to grab the opportunity offered by the corporation to easily acquire farming equipment at affordable costs.
The objective, according to NDC, is to see farmers increasing their output and in the end help efforts to transform the agriculture sector in the country.
Among the equipment offered, at free-interest rate loans and a three-year grace period are tractors.
NDC’s Public Relation Officer, Mr Innocent Msuha said at the on-going 44th Dar es Salaam International Trade Fair (DITF) that the minimum tractor price is 45m/-, without attached to any conditions.
‘‘A loaner should only pay an advance of 4m/-and submit a letter from local government leaders, stamped by his district ex ecutive director. “That is enough to make him/her q ualify to benefit because we are not a business oriented corporation, rather, helping small scale farmers shift from hand-hoe farming to the modern methods,’ said Mr Msuha.
The officer clarified that the tractor-parts have been imported under the partnership agreement between NDC and the Poland government, signed in 2016 and implementation started 2017.
So far NDC has assembled over 800 tractors and some 700 sold to farmers in various parts of the country.
The agreement, according to him, is that Poland should offer 2,400 tractors, affirming that the second batch (of the parts) is set to arrive soon.
He stressed that transforming the agriculture sector is mostly aiming at improving the farmers’ living standard and at the same time promoting industrialization as per the fifthphase ambition and call.
‘‘Industrialisation economy depends much on quality and q uantity farm-outputs. There is no way we can easily achieve the goal without supporting the majority small-scale farmers to achieve modernity farming practice by abandon hand-hoe farming,’’ he insisted.
In another development, NDC through its Tanzania Biotech Product Limited (TBPL) is set to produce various types of farm-pesticides, aiming to achieve the same goal of transforming the agriculture sector.
Already some samples for the cotton pesticides have been submitted to Tropical Pesticides Research Institute (TPRI), pending for approval. The approval will lead to mass production.
