IMPORTED cooking oil will be liable for custom duties in projections for 2024/25 financial year.

Agriculture minister Hussein Bashe said at a stopover rally here yesterday convened by Dr Emmanuel Nchimbi, the CCM secretary general, at Itaja in Singida Rural District, affirming that this would ease the way for local farmers and industries to find a market.

A market for onions is on the line up in the area, tied with implementing a 20bn/- irrigation project at Msangi, within the district.

Dr Nchimbi made a stopover tour at the area before exiting the region for Manyara, pursuing a revitalisation tour to reanimate party branches and sittings in five regions.

Ramadhan Ighondo, the Singida East MP, said that despite successes in various sectors, the area lacked a proper market for farmers to sell their crops, urging help for sunflower farmers by reducing their production costs.

Imposing tax on imported edible oil would ease absorption by local markets, he said, with Dr Nchimbi urging the minister to address the challenges, to which the minister made an assurance that the government was working to address the challenges in the coming financial year.

Local sunflower farmers can be assured of easier market access as the relevant ministries had coordinated on the matter to add tax on imported cooking oil to uplift local sunflower cultivation, he further noted.

The changes will be included in the coming central government budget listed for presentation to the legislature later next week, he said, elaborating that in the current financial year 52-percent of edible oil was produced from sunflower, while 27 percent was pressed from groundnuts.

As production levels do not meet local demand, half of what is marketed in shops is imported, even as sunflower production levels more than doubled, from 425,653.1 tonnes during fiscal 2021/2022 to 1.1m tonnes for 2022/23.

Farm yields in sunflower production rose from 0.8 tonnes to one tonnes per hectare, more than a 20 percent increase, with extension experts saying four tonnes per hectare is achievable in the area.

About 725 tonnes of sunflower seeds have been distributed to farmers through a subsidy programme, covering Dodoma, Manyara, Kilimanjaro, Rukwa, Katavi, Tanga and Geita regions by end of April, he added.