Source: Levies, levies . . . whither the cash? | The Herald August 1, 2017

Obert Chifamba Agri-Insight
IN 2015, Government introduced the Afforestation Levy meant to replenish woodlots and forests to cope with the swelling number of tobacco farmers, the majority of whom rely on firewood to cure the golden leaf.

Since then Government has through the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board (TIMB), collected over $21 million under the levy.

The levy was introduced as a way of trying to preserve the environment through afforestation. The figure is set to continue growing given the fact that more and more farmers are taking up tobacco every year.

For the 2016/17 farming season, a total of 82 254 farmers registered with TIMB to produce the crop, up from 72 531 that registered for the 2015/16 season.

At inception, a levy of 1,5 percent was deducted from every sale a farmer did but this has since been revised to 0,75 percent, which brought a little respite to the farmers.

The sad reality, however, is that the farmers from whose earnings the levy is being taken have to date not tasted the fruits of their contributions.

All the farmers I talked to professed ignorance over how the money is being used, as none of them have ever been able to access it to start afforestation projects.

I understand at some point farmers’ unions tried to engage TIMB through a joint council of farmer unions and the Zimbabwe Tobacco Association to ensure the funds are released for use by farmers but could not yield positive results.

Indeed, tobacco farmers are not happy with the way the levy is being treated. And they have every reason to feel cheated into believing that the levy was meant to support tobacco production by planting trees in order to continuously provide the much-needed fuel.

The bulk of the farmers use wood to cure tobacco, hence the introduction of the levy was quite a noble intention that appears to have gone awry somewhere along the way. It does not seem like the levy is being used for its intended purpose.

Then there is the rent and development levies that Government gazetted in 2016 for resettled farmers in accordance with the Finance Act assented to by President Robert Mugabe, which states that all resettled farmers with permits and 99-year leases in all farming regions of the country are expected to pay rent and development levies.

Under the rental levy A1 farmers pay $10 per year and $5 for development while their A2 counterparts pay $3 per hectare per year for rent and $2 per hectare per year for development.

The levies are meant to be used for developmental projects within the rural district councils from which they would have been collected.

These are the funds that are supposed to be used in the development of critical infrastructure, for instance, schools, clinics, roads, dip tanks and many others.

These are also the funds that are expected to be deployed in rehabilitation of roads, gully reclamations, soil conservation programmes and in some cases even for the setting up of cattle handling structures.

Rural district councils are expected to administer the funds paying particular attention to the needs of various localities but this does not seem to be happening. Roads are in very deplorable state out there, some dip tanks have even been rendered non-functional because of lack of maintenance while infrastructure in most schools and clinics is only changing for the worst.

In most cases farmers bear the brunt of absence of these critical forms of infrastructure. Take for instance, a farmer from Burma Valley intending to transport a bale of tobacco to Harare needs to pay the transporter $14 for the bale alone, then pay for his transport too.

Such a farmer would appreciate taking his produce to Mutare and pay just $3 for the bale, that is, if the levies could also be used to fund the process of decentralising tobacco auction floors to ease mobility challenges for farmers. Generally, farmers need updates on what has been achieved using their contributions.

Some farmers agonisingly watch their produce going to waste by the roadside or at their farms after being snubbed by transporters citing the ‘bad state’ of roads as their reason for not being interested in doing business with the farmers yet the same farmers pay development levies yearly.

Some bit of transparency on how the levies are later used can help motivate the farmers to appreciate and not resent the idea.

I have also gathered that farmers pay a dipping levy of $1 per beast per year that is expected to make up a quarter of the amount Government will eventually add to purchase dipping chemicals.

The farmers told me that there are dipping committees in the various farming communities that collect the funds on behalf of the Department of Veterinary Services and some of them have religiously paid the levies while some have just not been interested.

Their major worry is that dipping chemicals have always remained very difficult to get despite them meeting their part of the deal, which is exposing their cattle to tick-borne diseases that are killing them.

In areas such as Domboshava and Gokwe, for instance, the farmers allege that they have lost many cattle to tick-borne diseases. There are no dipping chemicals forcing the same farmers to purchase spray dips to save their cattle.