The Agriculture and Food Authority of Kenya in a letter dated March 5, 2021, said maize from the two countries ie Uganda and Tanzania have revealed high levels of mycotoxins “that are consistently beyond safety limits of 10 parts be billion” hence disrupting our growth in exports to Kenya. This might probably be as a result of poor post-harvest handling, which puts issues like our storage facilities system into perspective.
The most fundamental question would be: how has an agricultural-based economy been able to streamline the operations of this new budding lucrative trade in the 21st century?
The good news is that our government planners and policy formulators decided to start up an agency to be in charge of the warehousing receipt system.
The Uganda Warehouse Receipt System Authority (UWRSA) was established by an act of parliament (WRS Act 2006) as a regulator of the Warehouse Receipt System. For starters, a warehouse receipt system is where commodities in storage can be used as collateral for the financing of business.
UWRSA mandate is provided for in sec.4&5 of the warehouse receipt system Act,(2006)as:- To license storage facilities (silos & warehouses) To license storage keepers and the handlers at warehouses, to licence storage inspectors,
UWRSA also issue negotiable warehouse receipts by investigating the storage and classifying it according to grade, upon application by any person applying for a license to operate a warehouse under this Act, to inspect the storage facility, To determine whether the storage facilities for which licences are applied for are suitable for proper storage, to classify storage facilities in accordance with their ownership, location, surroundings, capacity, among others, upon application to issue to any storage facility keeper a license for the conduct of storage facility, to prescribe the duties of warehouse keepers, to provide guidelines and standards for the suitability for the proper storage of the goods, to suspend or revoke a license issued to warehouse keeper, among others.
With this excellent structured commodities trading system, you can confirm that youths have enormous opportunities to partake given its various value chains.
We, therefore, seek government to give this new sector special attention and increase funding in order to maximize the benefits that can add to our GDP.
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Ben Ssebuguzi is an economist and entrepreneur.
