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- Aug 20, 2018
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Cashew prices have jumped after John Magufuli, Tanzania’s president, ordered the army to buy the country’s entire 2018 cashew nut harvest.
The African nation is the seventh-largest producer of the nut, but a stand-off between farmers and buyers has prompted the president to act.
His intervention has come at a critical time. Tanzania is one of the few growers that harvests the crop between October and January — the fallow months before the leading growers of Vietnam, India and Nigeri start exporting in February and March.
Prices for processed kernels have jumped 10 per cent to $3.8 per pound since the start of November amid concerns about Tanzanian exports, according to Freeworld Trading, a UK nut trader. “Inventories are very very tight,” said Michael Stevens at Freeworld Trading.
Mr Magufuli’s actions have been criticised by some as political grandstanding, but his orders follow tension among Tanzania’s cashew farmers and private traders, who had been refusing to buy the in-shell nuts produced in the country because of high prices.
The bulk of the raw nuts which have yet to be shelled are shipped from Tanzania and other African countries to be processed, mainly in Vietnam and India. A falling price for processed kernels — after a bumper west Africa crop — has meant that cashew nut buyers importing for the processors have been reluctant to pay high prices.
Source: Subscribe to read | Financial Times
The African nation is the seventh-largest producer of the nut, but a stand-off between farmers and buyers has prompted the president to act.
His intervention has come at a critical time. Tanzania is one of the few growers that harvests the crop between October and January — the fallow months before the leading growers of Vietnam, India and Nigeri start exporting in February and March.
Prices for processed kernels have jumped 10 per cent to $3.8 per pound since the start of November amid concerns about Tanzanian exports, according to Freeworld Trading, a UK nut trader. “Inventories are very very tight,” said Michael Stevens at Freeworld Trading.
Mr Magufuli’s actions have been criticised by some as political grandstanding, but his orders follow tension among Tanzania’s cashew farmers and private traders, who had been refusing to buy the in-shell nuts produced in the country because of high prices.
The bulk of the raw nuts which have yet to be shelled are shipped from Tanzania and other African countries to be processed, mainly in Vietnam and India. A falling price for processed kernels — after a bumper west Africa crop — has meant that cashew nut buyers importing for the processors have been reluctant to pay high prices.
Source: Subscribe to read | Financial Times