Delegates to the Tobacco Association of Malawi (Tama) Farmers Trust annual general congress have called on government to create an agriculture development bank to unlock farmers’ access to capital.

To cement the call, Tama Farmers Trust president Abel Banda during the congress in Lilongwe on Thursday appealed to Minister of Agriculture Sam Kawale, who was in attendance, to make the request a priority.

He said the country’s economy is driven predominantly by the agriculture sector, especially tobacco. He said this calls for deliberate efforts by government to support the sector.

Kawale: We will make the request a priority

“The future of tobacco is bright and the potential for growth in the sector is high, but there is one big obstacle and that is access to finance. This makes it hard to sustain growth. Government should create an agriculture bank with special farmer-friendly loans,” Banda said.

Farmer Augustine Visiyani said the creation of such a bank could boost tobacco farming.

“If government can create a financing bank now and offer loans in dollars, it could boost farming a lot and enable farmers to withstand effects of the erratic kwacha.

Before multiparty democracy, we had the Rural Finance Bank  where farmers could access loans easily and on favourable conditions,” he said.

Making his contribution, JTI Leaf Malawi corporate affairs and communications director Limbani Kakhome agreed that a development bank could be a viable step that could also help farmers.

However, he called for the need to leverage with other value chains, particularly on contract farming as the country seeks to diversify to additional commercial crops.

In 2021, the share of agriculture to Malawi’s gross domestic product was 22.73 percent while industry had an 18.38 percent share and services sector 52.44 percent.

In 2020, the Malawi Government launched the Malawi Agricultural and Industrial Investment Corporation (Maiic), the first-ever public, private partnership (PPP) development finance institution platform for facilitating investments in agriculture.

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