Cashew nuts export earnings are expected to stabilize the shilling throughout December to next February, money experts projected.
The shilling remained stable against the US dollar closing at 2170/90 on Tuesday.
“We expect the pair to remain stable towards the year end supported by dollar inflows from commodity exports, such as cashew nuts,” CRDB said on its daily financial market highlights report. The report pointed out that cashew nuts exports will hold the shilling stabilisation through December to February.
Bank of Tanzania (BoT) monthly economic review for October shows that cashew nuts export has reached 182.3 million US dollars at the year ending September. While money experts figuring out that cashew nuts export inflows will stabilize the shilling, the crop value at international markets has gone down. The crop forex generation went down by some 29 per cent on year-to-year basis.
“The decline in the value of cashew nuts occurred in both export volume and prices,” BoT report indicates. The report shows that in similar period ending last September, cashew nuts generated 255.2 million US dollars.
However to add value of the crop export, Cashew nuts Board of Tanzania (CBT), envisaged to rise nuts’ processing by 30 per cent from current 10 per cent. CBT said early this year, the construction of three big cashew nuts processing factories were scheduled to start in the 2016/17 fiscal year.
The three factories are financed by the Cashew nuts Industry Development Trust Fund (CIDTF) and will be constructed in Tunduru, Mtwara Rural and Mkuranga districts. So far since 2016/17 season started four auctions have been conducted in Lindi and Mtwara regions with 10,170,438 kilogrammes sold.
A kilo of cashew nuts is 4,000/- in this season. Tanzania produces between 150,000 and 200,000 tonnes of cashew nuts, most of which is exported in raw form. The country’s cashew nuts are considered one of the best quality nuts in the world.
Tanzania is among the list of top 10 world producers. The export of raw cashew nuts however is widely ridiculed as an export of jobs for Tanzanians to foreign countries while denying producers of their rightful income due to the meager prices that the raw produce attracts.