Uganda fails to gain from high tea prices

But does government really care? 

In an interview with The Independent on March 10, Hadija Nakakande, the spokeswoman of the Ministry of Trade Industry and Cooperatives said the government is aware of the challenges in the tea sector and is working on a tea policy. She said the policy will guide the sector in areas of production, coordination, quality assurance, pricing, export promotion, marketing and value addition.

“The ultimate goal is to grow the sector that will in the end create more jobs, earn the country more foreign exchange, and contribute more taxes,” she said.

But Tumwesige says Nakakande is promising nothing new and that the government has been talking of a tea sector policy for the last 15 years but nothing much has been done.

In response, Nakakande says this time serious policy draft revisions have been ongoing since early last year and are expected to have the process completed by end of this year for government to consider it.

She said that government through the Uganda Development Cooperation (UDC), the development and investment arm of the government of Uganda, with the mandate to promote and facilitate the industrial and economic development, is waiting for funds to establish three tea processing factories in Western Uganda to provide ready market for tea farmers in addition to boosting value addition.

According to a 2014 tea sector study conducted by Economic Policy Research Centre at Makerere University titled ` A Comparative Review of Trends, Challenges and Coordination Failures’, Uganda has about 200,000 hectares suitable for tea production, but only 14% (28,000 hectares) is utilised both by smallholder and estate owners.

The research centre recommends that Uganda learns from Kenya to put in place a comprehensive tea policy and effective institutional framework to coordinate the various interventions and programmes in the sub-sector.

Consumed as iced or hot, tea stands out to be among one of the most consumed popular beverages globally together with coffee which is why analysts badly want the government to urgently intervene to benefit from the tea value chain.

Mombasa Auction trends for tea (2010-2016) for selected countries

Source: EATTA

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editor@independent.co.ug