An Action Plan for Developing Agricultural Input Markets in Tanzania

involved in the marketing of seed and agro-chemicals.
Many of these companies like Balton, Mohammed Enterprises,
and STACO have a number of branches with
storage capacities, agents, dealers, and sub-dealers in
the provinces.
Tobacco Companies—The two tobacco companies,
Dimon and Tanzania Leaf Tobacco Company
(TLTC), also import fertilizers. Between them they
import about 20,000 tons every year. The products imported
are NPKs (10-18-24, 6-20-18) and CAN for
topdressing. The fertilizers are given to contract tobacco-growing
farmers on credit with payment recovered
at harvest time. The recommended dose is 10 bags
of NPKs and 2½ bags of CAN per hectare. Agrochemicals
are also provided to the farmers on need basis obtained
from the importers in Tanzania. The Tobacco
Association of Tanzania looks after the agronomic operations
including research, testing, and trials; the individual
companies support their farmer customers by
having trained leaf technicians available in the field.
The Tanganyika Farmers Association—TFA
(registered as a limited company in Tanzania) was one
of the principal marketing agents of TFC before deregulation,
distributing fertilizers with subsidy ranging
from a highest of 85% at one time down to 25% in
later years. TFA feels that there is not much of an effective
demand for fertilizers since farm gate prices of
outputs are low and fertilizer prices are high. The KR
II imports in the initial years caused serious market
distortions. Subsequent auctions of KR II material also
have not been timely. TFA therefore did not participate
and bought material from the successful bidders at retail
prices. TFA had no plans to import fertilizers in
2004 because it was known in the market that TFC was
promised funds to import and market (at subsidized
prices) about 8,000-10,000 tons of fertilizers for the
2003/04 season. TFA has 13 depots with storage space
of 1,000-4,000 m 2 . It also has 14 sub-depots with adequate
staff to take care of retail sales. In all they have
5,000 farmer members who have been provided inputs
procured by TFA on seasonal credit since 1969/70. In
addition, TFA has also been selling inputs (seed, fertilizer,
and CPPs) to the non-member farmers against cash
payments. At one stage TFA was also purchasing outputs,
but is now restricting itself to the supply of inputs.
TFA sales have been declining, and this year, 90%
of the sales were accounted for by agrochemicals (in-
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secticides, fungicides, and herbicides) and a small
amount of local rock phosphate. In the past these agrochemicals
were imported by TFA, but are now bought
locally from Twiga, Balton, and others. The employees
at all TFA depots and sub-depots have been adequately
trained in the past in house by TPRI and
MAFS.
Indigenous Products
Phosphate Rock—The Minjingu Rock Phosphate
(MRP) deposits containing 28%-30% P2O5 are estimated
at 10 million tons. Besides the P2O5 contents,
other percentage contents of the rock are: CaO (41.7%),
SiO2 (9.4%), MgO (3.2%), Fluorine (3.1%), and Al2O3
(1.2%). It is reported that MRP has high values of total
P2O5 and neutral ammonium citrate solubility and is
therefore used for direct application. Since it sells retail
for about Tanzanian Shillings (Tsh) 5,000-7,000
per 50-kg bag, it is promoted as a cheaper source of
P2O5 compared with DAP or TSP. Although the production
capacity of the mine is 100,000 tpy, only about
10,000-12,000 tons is produced and sold with about
7,000 tons of this being exported to Kenya and the balance
being used in the country. The production facilities
were privatized, and the operations are now managed
by a company in the private sector. There is no
aggressive market development effort by this company
although most of the research centers make efforts to
promote MRP not only as a source of P2O5 but also to
reduce soil acidity in the southern provinces of
Tanzania.
Fertilizer Imports
Since 1994/95, in addition to TFC, 19 companies
in the private sector have been actively involved in the
import of fertilizers (Table II.9). Many of these companies
have continued to import steadily year after year.
A few of these companies, like TFA, have the potential
to import and market larger quantities of fertilizers.
Table II.10 provides the level of imports, consumption,
and inventories in the country according to the MAFS
data (adjusted and rounded) for the years 1994/95 to
1998/99. According to these data, the import levels increased
after liberalization in 1994/95 from approximately
50,000 tons to over 90,000 tons. Table II.11 indicates
the fertilizer imports during the period
November 2001 to November 2003, as reported by
COTECNA (the international agency appointed by the
government for pre-shipment inspections). The total