Breaking Newss: FT Interview: Jakaya Kikwete

FT: Agriculture has been the laggard. What's holding it back?

JK: Why I'm saying that there is great opportunity is because agriculture is mostly subsistence agriculture, peasant agriculture…and therefore production is low and the incomes of the people definitely are very low. What we are trying to do now is embark on a green revolution…looking at increasing irrigated agriculture, increasing the use of high yield seeds…the use of fertilisers. The average use of fertiliser is abysmally low; it is eight kilos per acre. When you compare with the Netherlands where it's 577 kilos per acre, so you can see why…the level of (production) is very low.

FT: Do you need to reform the land ownership laws to allow…?

JK: It's not this. Land ownership has never been a problem. People have access to land. The peasants cannot complain about land ownership.

FT: But to access credit they need land titles as collateral for the banks?

JK: It's not a problem of land ownership because owning land is also allowed. It's only that they don't have the titles. But this to us is not a critical problem. The other important thing is that they use pesticides and insecticides. We are looking at extension workers to train farmers…and then we are looking at the marketing structure. We are also looking at infrastructure, rural roads so that crops can get to the market. This is a whole package; you are looking at a seven-year programme. We are also trying to look at the fiscal incentives to give to investors.

FT: There's some controversy about incentives that have been provided in the past, for example in the mining sector.

JK: In the mining sector, I don't know if we've got a controversy…What became a problem is there was a clause that allowed investors to cover losses. As long as you made losses one year, you could carry them over to the next and to the next. And because of that they would pay no taxes. So this fellow takes all the gold away and he says he makes losses and so he does not pay us anything. So he is the only one that is being protected. Those of us who are losing our resources are not protected. This is the thing that created the kind of debate that we had and we had to renegotiate. Click Here for more interview.