Author: ABELA MSIKULA
AfricaPress-Tanzania: TANZANIA Mercantile Exchange (TMX ), is implementing a six month cotton pilot project in the Lake zone to help producers access domestic and global markets.
Speaking at the just ended 44th Dar es Salaam International Trade Fair (DITF) exhibitions, TMX Director of Operations, Mr Augustino Mbulumi said the project involves special education campaigns where TMX visits farmers in their cooperative unions and farms and educate them on the benefit of the markets.
“The project is set to take place throughout this cotton farming season (July to December). Visiting farmers in their fields aim to provide modern farming technicalities to enable them have not only quality but quantity produce of international standards,” he said.
He added that the government through TMX is in place (operations) to address the challenge of markets to farmers for all crops identified in the Warehouse Receipts system, mostly sesame, coffee, green grams, yellow grams and cotton, among others.
According to him, already TMX has connected sesame, coffee and green gram producers to online markets. Luckily, yellow gram farmers have been automatically switched into the system/ markets.
“We also wanted to conduct the project to yellow gram farmers, but fortunately, the crops are grown in the same areas/regions with green gram. Thus, the latter have been helping their fellow farmers to access the markets,” he said.
According to him, the system has been boosting not only farmers’ income but also an increase in crop collection, as bureaucracy and fraud no longer exists.
He cited an example of how TMX and the Coffee Board boosted the crop (coffee) collection in Kagera, from 50,000 tonnes to 65,000 tonnes per year.
Records also indicate an increase in sesame collection since TMX officially started the operations in 2017, from 1,500 to 16,000 tonnes currently, said Mr Mbulumi.
TMX has been making sure that apart from having the chance to participate in an online price negation process, they also receive their payments on time, within 72 hours from the time auction ends.
It was further noted that to maintain timely payments, it is a must that any registered crop buyer should have not less than 20m/- deposit in a bank account, which should be released immediately after she/he has won the auction.
The money is directly sent to a farmer’s bank account to make sure that one receives the entire amount she/he deserves, the Director explained further.
