Tea Farmers Demand Meeting With KTDA To Address Credit Concerns

NAIROBI,Kenya, Dec, 17 – Agriculture, livestock fisheries and Cooperatives Cabinet Secretary Peter Munya is expected to facilitate a meeting between Tea Sacco’s in the Cooperative movement and the Greenland Fedha a subsidiary of the Kenya Tea Development Agency Holdings (KTDA) in the coming weeks over concerns that farmers can not acess credit.

The quagmire is said to have affected operations in the sector.

Munya said that the national government had equally expressed concerns over the operations of the Greenland Fedha  saying that it might be forced to step in to assist them align their operations for maximum effectiveness.

Greenland Fedha Limited is a non-deposit taking microfinance institution in Kenya and fully owned by KTDA that was established to provide credit to its tea smallholder farmers.

Farmers anticipate a situation where the micro-finance institution would hold their tea and fail to remit payments if a loan scheme by the institution is to be implemented.

“This will lead to defaults on loans borrowed by farmers as Greenland Fedha would have an advantage over Sacco’s as they do hold farmers tea money,” said one farmer.

Munya insisted that the government is committed to ensuring farmers thrive in their various sector and will proceed to conduct reforms.

“There has been a challenge with the Greenland fedha being a subsidiary of KTDA and therefore at an advantage position in relation to Sacco and this has undermined the tea Sacco’s “, he said adding “we want to align them to see how they can work together since they are servicing the same farmer”.

“Maybe Greenland fedha should be lending through Sacco’s or there should be rules that if one is to borrow in Green Fedha, they have to be cleared by the Sacco’s that they are a member. Things need to be aligned and that is why I have volunteered to do a joint meeting between the Sacco’s and KTDA,” he said.

The government has ensured lending rates from the micro finance institutions have been brought down from 24 per cent to 8 percent.

Reforms within the tea sector have seen, monthly earnings for tea farmers per kilogram of green leaf increasing from the Initial sh 17 to Sh 21.

Cooperative Alliance of Kenya (CAK) CEO Daniel Marube lauded the CSs assurance of a joint meeting saying it was a long time coming.

“The intention of the Cabinet Secretary is Good but what we are saying as co-operators here is that let KTDA concentrate on its core mandate of processing and marketing tea but matters of finances using farmers money to lend to the same farmer with the intention of killing the Sacco’s is not sustainable”, said Marube.