A TEAM of experts tasked with reviewing all taxes imposed on farmers is on final stages and will soon hand-over the report to relevant authorities for further steps, the House was informed yesterday.
Minister for Agriculture, Livestock and
Fisheries, Mr Mwigulu Nchemba, told the National Assembly that
suggestions to reduce or cancel such taxes will be incorporated in the
Finance Bill that is due for tabling later next month.
“We are doing this to find out areas
where farmers are being exploited. President John Magufuli had already
pronounced that nuisance taxes imposed on small-holder farmers are
things of the past,” he noted. The minister was responding to a
supplementary question by Jasson Rweikiza (Bukoba Rural - CCM), who
wanted to know when such taxes will be scrapped.
The Minister told the National Assembly
here that the move is aimed at getting rid of all nuisance taxes as it
was earlier pledged by President Magufuli as well as improving system of
issuing agricultural inputs.
Earlier, the Deputy Minister for
Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, Mr William Ole Nasha, told the
House that such taxes were holding farmers back and make their activity
less paying. He said that all taxes which will be considered less
important will be immediately scrapped.
He was also responding to Mr Rweikiza
who had claimed that the government remained quiet on the taxes while it
had already pledged to work on such unnecessary charges. He said that,
for instance, coffee farmers were opting to sell their produce to
neighbouring Uganda where they were fetching a lot of money unlike in
Tanzania where farmers were compelled to pay 26 different types of
taxes.
The deputy minister noted that the
government was aware of the problems and that is why they had started
working on such laws and see how they could be changed.
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