DODOMA: THE Tanzania Sisal Board (TSB) has collected 507m/- in 2022/2023 from zero fetched in 2019/2020 fiscal year.
This was stated in Dodoma on Wednesday by the TSB Director General, Mr Saddy Kambona, as he was explaining the achievements registered by the board for 2022/2023 financial year as well as the implementation of the board’s plans for this financial year.
He said the increase is due to various efforts made by the government including the inclusion of the sisal crop in the strategic crops list.
Mr Kambona mentioned other factors as fulfilling the directives of the ruling party’s CCM 2020-2025 election manifesto, which demands for the increasing sisal production from 36,000 tonnes produced in 2020 to 80,000 tonnes per year by 2025.
He explained that the government’s move to bring the crop into the strategic crops list was due to its market and product’s demand globally due to the discovery of new uses, especially the production of new products such as construction materials (gypsum boards, bricks, timber, galvanised, tiles), sisal sugar, special paper, bio gas, fertiliser, livestock food, aesthetics and car boards.
Kambona said that sisal production has also increased from 36,379 tonnes in 2020/2021 to 48,351.49 tonnes in 2022/2023, as well as increased board development fund from 100m/- in 2019/2020 to 2bn/- in 2022/2023.
He noted that during this period, the TSB has also been successful in collecting and distributing 6,991,200 seedlings free to smallholder farmers in 16 districts of mainland Tanzania.
Kambona added TBS has also succeeded to increase the number of registered smallholder farmers from 6,887 in 2020/2021 to 8,972 in 2022/2023.
TBS also successfully increased smallholder farms where a total of 983 smallholder farmers were provided with farms in Korogwe District, Tanga Region and more than 3,000 farmers have been allocated farms in the Kilosa District, Morogoro Region.
“The registration process for smallholder farmers is still going on as it is estimated that farmers who have not been reached and registered could be more than 22,000,” he said.
Altering the implementation of this financial year’s plans, he has said that TSB continues to encourage smallholder farmers to join the sisal production farming to ensure that the sisal contributes to the growth of the agricultural sector.
He added that the board will also continue with the process of reviving factories and processing machinery as well as continuing to work with the Tanzania Agriculture Research Institute (TARI) to construct a tissue seedling production laboratory.
