The government should direct more funds to the agricultural sector and improvement of infrastructure in the coming financial year to control inflation and boost national income.
These are among the views aired by Members of Parliament at the weekend over the national budget for the 2014/15 fiscal year.
They said infrastructure development is vital, especially in rural areas where it would enable farmers transport their crops to the market and as a result, reduce inflation which according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), stands at 6.5 percent yet contribution from agriculture to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is only four percent.
Kahama legislator James Lembeli (CCM) said the budget allocation for the agricultural sector is too small yet the sector employs the most people in the country.
“There are no deliberate efforts by government to assist farmers and especially those engaged in commercial farming,” he alleged.
Lembeli said it is only through infrastructural development that inflation can be reduced since better infrastructure will mean faster and timely delivery of products to the market which then should stabiles the prices that are driven by supply and demand.
Another MP, Zarina Madabida (Special Seats- CCM), said: “Agriculture employs almost 80 percent of the country’s population but is not given priority…the government must inject more money into irrigation schemes and let unemployed youth receive financial support and agricultural inputs.”
She suggested that funds for the 2014/15 fiscal year should be directed to stimulation of the economic sector through construction of roads and rehabilitation of the railway infrastructure.
On another development, Pauline Gekulu, (CHADEMA- Special Seats) said at 6.5 percent the inflation rate, Tanzania still suffers from the very high rate and called for more efforts to bring it down in the next financial year.
She also emphasised on the importance of the government to settle its debts with social security funds which have now reached to over 600bn/-. Seconding the views, Ahmed Ally Salim, (CCM- Solwa) advised the government to come up with measures to lower the current inflation rate in order to give the much needed cost relief to Tanzanians. He said there is need to control fundamental economic parameters He mentioned some as interest rates charged by banks and financial institutions.
The MP said the Bank of Tanzania (BoT) should reduce the interest rates it charges on banks from the current 12.7 percent to at least 7 percent, as was the case in previous years.
He said the high BoT rates contribute to commercial banks’ similar high interest rates of up to 18 percent which means borrowers in turn sell their products at high prices to furnish the debt.
Similarly, Mohamed Misanga (Singida South-CCM) blamed the central bank for raising banks’ borrowing rates to over 12 percent, saying: “Tanzanians are not happy with the interest rates charged by commercial banks, but this is mainly caused by BoT…it should reduce its rates to enable banks to charge tolerable interest rates.”
Meanwhile, Tundu Lissu (Chadema-Singida East) faulted the government for what he described as ‘providing wrong information on the purchase of school desks using radar money.’
Lissu said Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda had told the parliament early this year that the government had so far distributed to various districts a total of 63,342 desks made from hard plastics.
He said the PM had further noted that a total of 63, 500 desks made of steel were also distributed bringing the number of desks distributed to a total of 93,740, which he claimed was not true.
SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN
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