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Kilmanjaro Makes “Coffee Headway”
in Tanzania
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Using recent agricultural innovations, the Kilimanjaro Region in Tanzania has managed to uproot aged and unproductive coffee trees and replaced them with a total of 24 million new, improved and disease resistant varieties. This was done during a ten year campaign to revive the region’s sole export cash crop that started during the 1997/98 crop season.
The Kilimanjaro Regional Commissioner, Mohammed Babu, said that the re-planting exercise was equivalent to achieving about 38% of the country’s target. Working in collaboration with the Tanzania Coffee Research Institute (TACRI) in Hai district, the regional authority has managed to raise ten new improved varieties of disease resistant coffee seedlings.
Coffee stakeholder groups from all districts in the region working with TACRI that offered technical know how, have managed to establish 39 improved varieties of coffee seedling nurseries with a total of 35 000 base improved coffee trees that are capable of producing 40 plantable materials (tissues) each per annum.
Mohammed Babu said that taking into consideration the fact that coffee is the economic mainstay of the region, coffee stakeholders were eager to transform the traditional coffee plantations into modern farming of quality crop but were overwhelmed by a shortage of coffee seedlings.
However, he added that producers were not worried about world market prices as it had stabilised from 2004/2005 season where an average price per kilo of coffee was between Sh1 200 (94 cents) and Sh1 500 ($1.18), while the grade quality coffee fetched an average of more than Sh3 000 ($2.36) per kilo.
Supermarket shareholders seal Uchumi working capital deal
Shareholders of Uchumi Supermarkets have found a way to raise Sh300 million for the retail chain's working capital. The deal crafted in a four-hour meeting at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre in Nairobi will enable the company to raise Sh975 million after the Kenyan government had earlier put in Sh675 million with the shareholders expected to secure the difference.
Shareholders will lend the company a minimum of Sh10,000 each, and in multiples of Sh5,000 thereafter. They will then become debenture shareholders, which will mean that they are secured creditors and cannot lose their funds even if the company were to close again.
According to the agreement, the debt payments will be released every three months and pegged to the 91-day Treasury bill interest rate.
This is the same rate at which the Kenyan government's own Sh675 million loan is pegged. It will also mean that the interest rate will keep on changing in line with rates charged on the T-bill. The shareholders who will qualify for the loan stock are those registered by May 31, this year. Investors who are not already shareholders but would wish to support the rescue plan could also put in their application, but preference will be given to the existing shareholders.
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