Tanzania produces 13.6million raw skins annually

MAUREEN ODUNGA AND KATARE MBASHIRU

TANZANIA’s exports of raw skin pieces stand at 1.6 million with the country’s production capacity reaching up to 13.6 million, Parliament heard here on Friday.

Deputy Minister for Livestock and Fisheries, Mr Abdallah Ulega told the National Assembly yesterday that the country was exporting about 1,630,740 skins valued at 10.05b/- per year.

According to him, the products were being sold in Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, Togo, Pakistan, United States, Italy, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and China.

He was responding to a question posed by Special Seats lawmaker, Ms Shally Raymond (CCM), who had wanted to know the capacity of skins to which the country was producing each year.

“How much are we  producing for local consumption in our local processing leather industries and how much are exporting as raw skin?” queried the special seats legislator.

In response, Mr Ulega said that on average, the country was producing 13.6 million of skin every year out of which 4.2 million were from cows. Others she said were from goats (6.9 million) and sheep (2.5 million).

“As of now we have three skin processing industries which are operating at two stages of wet blue and finished leather respectively,” he said.

Statistics from the Ministry of Livestock and Fisheries show that in Tanzania hides and skins sub-sector has an off-take rate of 8-10 per cent for cattle, 15percent for goats and 25per cent for sheep.

Off-take rate is usually defined as a percentage of sale or slaughter at the end or during a production cycle to the initial stock. Most of the hides and skins in Tanzania are produced from indigenous cattle stock. Tanzania’s collection of hides and skin has been increasing over time.