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The
Commission for Privatization and Planning has not provided the
investors with elaborate guidelines for investment ventures,
precisely the fields being given top priority for development.
Had there been sound guidelines,
surely agriculture, said to be the backbone of our economy, would
have been put at the top in the priority list.
Agriculture is the sector that
employs more people here than any other, office work is a minor
thing and even less productive.
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"Investors"
currently operating in the country are mainly based in urban areas
because they target quick profits. Investors should also be taken to
the untapped, open spaces where they should establish livestock
ranches and farming estates especially now that local coffee
business is no longer profitable.
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Agriculture
is probably still the mainstay of our Tanzanian society. It goes
without saying therefore that all efforts both at individual and
state level ought to be directed towards this sector if at all our
people are to be liberated from poverty - web. With the agriculture
cooperative unions and now the famous state farms (eg NAFCO, NARCO,
etc,) gone, one finds no hope in our agriculture development
prosperity and the future is indeed still gloomy.
We thought the onset of
liberalization, privatization, and globalization in its totality
would as well address this sector and thereby give it a facelift but
alas! Our expectations and assumptions have been proved quite wrong.
Most of the investors in the country don’t seem to be interested in
investing their funds in agriculture; we find them concentrating in
mineral explorations, brewing, cloth, cement and sugar industries
which already have relatively strong base. Worse still, the
government has not clearly defined its investment policy in
agriculture development under this climate.
Arusha, Manyara and Kilimanjaro
regions, for example, have vast and fertile agricultural areas with
a number of dying or rather dead maize, wheat, coffee and rice farms
which could be taken over by able and prospective investors, a move
which could improve peoples economy and that of the government as
well.
Our call and cry to these
business-partners and the government as well at this moment is to
request for their diversion and vision to fully participate into the
agricultural sector development with maximum incentives to that
effect. |
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I still do
not understand why the so- called investors mainly populate our
towns, running pubs and clubs instead of doing serious business or
work.
This country has vast areas that
could be used for agriculture and this is where all serious
investors worth their names should be investing into.
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