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Minister pushing for an end to tea taxes
- Details
- Published on Monday, 04 June 2007 03:56
"My ministry is the one charged with the responsibility of preparing the Budget prospect and we have told the Finance minister to remove all taxes on tea and coffee," Obwocha said in a telephone interview.
Within, Obwocha said the Government is talking the World Trade Organisation (WTO) on modalities of improving tea prices so that local farmers can benefit.
While one kilogramme of made tea is selling at Sh150 at the world tea markets, growers are earning far much less since value addition is missing on Kenyan tea.
"We are pressing WTO to allow us start adding value to our tea so that we can attract those prices," Obwocha added.
The minister said MPs from tea growing areas are doing every thing possible to ensure farmers benefited from their business.
He was responding to criticism from farmers in Nyamira District that MPs from tea growing areas have adopted a "don’t care attitude" to the tea sector.
The farmers say they will consider replacing tea with other food crops owing to heavy taxes by the Government.
Led by Mr Wilfred Omariba of Peoples’ Empowerment and Development Services — a local human rights organisation — the farmers said that since election into office lawmakers from Nyamira District have done little to promote tea-farming business in the area.
Tea farming is the main farming activity and a leading cash crop earner for the local population of more than 600,000. Coffee farming was largely abandoned in the 1980s.
The farmers want prohibitive levies scrapped, particularly the 2 per cent Presumptive Tax on every kilogramme of processed tea. Such levies and high costs on farm inputs are killing farmers morale, Omariba said.
He said MPs from leading sugarcane and coffee growing areas had made good efforts to ensure farmers reaped maximum benefits from the business.
The tea farmers are served by six Kenya Tea Development Authority managed factories. Factory managers have of late have been complaining of an acute shortage of green leaf owing to invasion of their tea crop by brokers acting for multinational firms.
