Browsing by Author "Mashalla, Byedileclara Charles"

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Empowering agriculture: exploring warehouse receipt systems for financing producers in Tanzania
(Sokoine University of Agriculture, 2024) Mashalla, Byedileclara Charles
The Warehouse Receipt System (WRS) was initiated by the government to enhance financing for cashew nut producers, ensure a fair and stable market, and enable producers to store their yields in warehouses for later sale at more favourable prices. However, producers still express dissatisfaction with the system due to lack of transparency. Moreover, the WRS is criticized for its complex lending procedures and high interest rates when financing smallholder producers, which deter producers from utilizing the system to borrow money. Therefore, this study aimed to assess the effectiveness of warehouse receipt systems for financing cashew nut producers in Tandahimba District, Tanzania. Specifically, the study identified smallholder producers’ perception and acceptance towards the usefulness of WRS in accessing finance from financial institutions, challenges facing smallholder producers in accessing finance from financial institutions through WRS and the factors influencing cashew nut smallholder producers to access finance from financial institutions. A cross-sectional research design and a mixed methods research approach were adopted. The study included 122 participants who included 100 smallholder cashew nut producers as respondents, 8 WRS operator officers, 6 bank officers and 8 extension officers as key informants. Simple random sampling technique was used to select smallholder cashew nut producers for a household survey while purposive sampling technique was used to identify WRS operator officers, bank officers and extension officers for interview. Data were analysed using IBM SPSS to compute descriptive statistics, particularly frequencies, percentages, means and standard deviations. Moreover, binary logistic regression was used to determine influence of WRS related factors on access to finance from financial institutions. The findings show that smallholder cashew nut producers had a negative perception and acceptance towards the usefulness of WRS in accessing finance because WRS neither assisted producers to access loans on time nor offered collateral to producers to enable them access credits from financial institutions. Likely, WRS did not assist producers in ensuring that there were proper lending procedures to reduce risks to the financial institutions. Also, it did not provide financial and credit information to smallholder cashew nut producers. The challenges facing smallholder producers in accessing finance timely included low investment in financing cashew nut producers (92%), delayed loans (82%), lack of enough understanding regarding loan process/provisions in financialinstitution 73(73%), producers being not sure of whether on a promise of payment (68%), and lack of loan guarantee from WRS (64%). Further, the factors influencing cashew nut smallholder producers to access finance from financial institutions were age of the producers’ (ß = 1.421, p = 0.001), having financial statements for at least three years of producers’ in cooperatives (ß = 1.249, p = 0.027), membership to cooperative union (ß = 1.562, p = 0.014), absence of criminal cases (ß = 0.931, p = 0.042), certificate of maximum liability from registrar of cooperatives (ß = 2.556, p = 0.011), minutes of the meeting which approved application for the loan from cooperatives (ß = 1.257, p = 0.041), farm/ land size (ß = 0.824, p = 0.044) and effectiveness of cooperative association in linking producers’ to getting a loan from a financial institution (ß = 0.921, p = 0.032). The findings suggest that producers who fulfilled the mentioned factors were more likely to secure finance from financial institutions. These factors contribute to building trust and credibility in the eyes of these institutions. The findings also revealed that smallholder producers are still facing significant challenges in accessing loans through the Warehouse Receipt System (WRS). These challenges included insufficient investment in financing cashew nut producers, delays in loan disbursement, limited understanding of loan processes and provisions among producers, uncertainty regarding the fulfilment of promised payments, and the absence of loan guarantees from the WRS. These difficulties resulted in a decline in both agricultural production and marketing activities in the study area. The knowledge generated from the study may assist the cashew nut board in Tanzania through WRS to make a self-evaluation on how effective it has been involving cashew nut producers to access finance through their system; hence, take effective measures to lobby for improvement and formulation of policies considering the factors, challenges and perception and identified for efficient access to finances among the cashew nut smallholder producers.