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Tax challenges farmers to improve quality of cotton
2008-04-21 10:32:42
By Patrick Kisembo
Cotton growers in developing countries have been challenged to improve the quality of their produce to render it meet international market requirements.
The challenge was made in Dar es salaam on Friday by the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Marketing, Dr Stergomena Tax, during the launch of an international workshop on Commercial Standardisation of Instrument Testing of Cotton (CSITC) project.
``We have witnessed emerging quality demands from international markets associated with agro-technological methods in farms, changes in production methods in industry and existence of niche markets,`` she said.
Dr Tax said the demands have put pressure on high quality cotton to producers in developing countries.
The PS said the consequences of not meeting the requirements was low prices to cotton exports, which could result into unsustainable production.
``It is therefore important to start obtaining and using reliable information on quality cotton if we need to excel in this competitive world market,`` she advised.
Dr Tax said cotton growers need information on appropriate breeding, adding that ``research activities are critical in order to enhance the quality of cotton``.
She urged ginning companies to access information on appropriate processes to optimise their products.
``But traders or merchants need information on quality of the cotton to satisfy their customers,`` she said.
The project has established two Regional Technical Centres (RTC) in Africa, one in Mali, for West African countries and another in Tanzania for those of East and Central Africa.
For his part, Tanzania Bureau of Standards (TBS) Director Charles Ekelege, said: ``I expect our centre to perform instrumental testing of cotton from this region before it is exported to international markets.`` The bureau hosted the event.
Ekelege said the aim was to ensure labs train and provide opportunity for expertise sharing and information dissemination at regional level.
He said the four years (2007-2011) project worth USD1.5m is being funded by the common fund for commodities (CFC) and the European Union. Tanzania will inject in about USD178,000 to it.
Senior Manager, Cotton from Bremen Fibre Institute Axel Driveling, said the overall objective of the project was to assist cotton producing countries, especially developing countries meet emerging quality assessment requirements of the global cotton market.
`This is necessary to strengthen or maintain competitive position in the world market,`` he oberved.
The expert said the world market now wants cotton that is being tested by machines (Instrument Testing of Cotton) instead of that which is tested manually.
The workshop was attended by participants from Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe while neighbouring countries like Kenya, Ethiopia and Sudan took part to learn more on the new instrumental testing.
CFC and EU have been funding the operation of the projects.
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