By Staff Reporter
FORMER Prime Minister, John Samwel Malecela has challenged the ministry of agriculture to bridge efforts with relevant stakeholders from private and public sectors, including the financial institutions, to accelerate more investments towards the country’s grapes and wine processing sector.
He cited, most of the grape farmers are still crowded- out of access to necessary farming inputs and capital loans from financial facilities the constraints that deny them to attain needed productivity and high yields.
Malecela, the country’s renowned politician and grape farmers, availability of reliable markets and reasonable prices also stands among tall snags that upset the vine growers in the country, and the economic sector in general to thrive.
He itemised the challenges that haunting the vital sector during his special interview with this publication.
“Tanzania, especially Dodoma, has been endowed with a most favourable climate for the cultivation of grapes more than any part in the world but it is unfortunate that the country has yet to tap and benefit from the rarely found prestigious economic opportunity,” he observed.
Despite admitting and appreciating the so far efforts being initiated by the government towards general improvement of the side, Melecela underscored the need for further efforts, especially for assisting the farmers to venture effectively into grapes bulk juice processing as a way to counter market challenges.
“Majority of grape farmers are forced to sell their crops at prices of loss due to lack of financial muscle to process the grapes at their own shadows,” he observed.
Should the grapes farmers be empowered to process grapes bulk juice in their vineyards, he said they would stand a beneficial side as they will be able to preserve the product for sometime while awaiting for the potential customer who will be willing to dish out deserved prices.
“Currently, it appears that most of the wine processing factories, from within and outside the country, prefer to procure grapes bulk juice rather than raw grapes and thus it is imperative for the local farmers to adopt the system in order to benefit from their farming outputs ” Malecela insisted.
He communicated that the parent ministry must work in sync with the Tanzania Agricultural Development Bank (TADB) and other financial facilities with loan scheme packages towards agriculture to see how best to assist the farmers to start processing the raw grapes on their own capacity.
To solve ongoing market woes among the grape farmers, the government is under the process to install at least three major plants for the processing and storage of grape bulk juice in different locations in Dodoma region.
The ongoing project, to to gobble up to 3bn/- upon it competition will see erection of the modern pants in Chinangali II area of Chamwino District, to occupy at least 6000 acres, in Mpunguzi area (3000 acre) and the last to plant will occupy 4000 acres in Hombolo suburb of Dodoma capital city.
As per the project’s targets, the facilities will be used by the grape farmers to process and store their raw wine grapes into bulk juices while waiting for possible buyers.
Commenting over the development, the country’s leading wine maker pundit, who doubles as the proprietor of the Aliko Vintage Company, Archard Kato, observed that the development was laying a fresh foundation stone to support the country’s wine sector to carve a new successful niche.
The wine mogul, Kato, who's a producer of best wines that are currently competing highly in the world market, including Dompo, Image, For You and Alter, to mention but a few, said Tanzania has an prestigious potential to stand at the apex of the global wine making industry, should all barriers removed.
In further efforts to spur performance of the sector, the government had decided to increase wine importation duty from 2,466.45 to 5,600 per one liter, being in more focus to help promote the performance of the local wine sector.
Being the country's grapes and wine hub, Dodoma region is currently with at least three major wine factories- Aliko Vintage Co. Ltd, Central Tanganyika Wine Company (CETAWICO), and Dane Holding Company (DHC), and more than seven other small scale plants scattered at different locations under ownership of farmers associations.
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