THE financial sector is an essential player in agriculture development, playing a facilitating role of bolstering the necessary capital for farming activities like storage, processing, packaging, transport, insurance and marketing of the produce.
Unfortunately so far, only six per cent of Tanzanians have access to financial loans from banks, with the agricultural sector accounting for only one per cent of the loans. The banking sector attributes high risk in lending to farmers as the main bottleneck. According to a recent Fin- Scope survey, the proportion of adult population using banks and other formal financial institutions is around 12.4 per cent only.
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