Clove smuggling report prompts heated debates in Zanzibar

Discussions about findings of a recent report into clove smuggling from Zanzibar turned to heated debates in the House of Representatives last week, as it emerged that "almost everybody" was implicated in the illicit trade, sources on the island told IRIN.

The report, which was commissioned by the House, "spares no one", they said.

However, during a tempestuous session, one member described the report as "full of lies" and the Speaker of the House reportedly had to intervene to restore order.

Meanwhile, opposition politicians have called the smuggling "a silent protest" to show that something is wrong and there is a need for change to the clove policy.

At the moment, clove farmers on Zanzibar are supposed to sell all their cloves directly to the government. However, given the discrepancy between the official price, 3,500 Tanzanian shillings ($3.5) per kilo on Zanzibar, and the black market price - reportedly between 7,000 and 10,000 Tanzanian shillings in Kenya - many farmers take the illicit option.

"With all these costs and efforts he incurs, he [the farmer] is still getting a profit if he ships the cloves across the channel to Kenya. Why is it that the Zanzibar government cannot catch that market?" asked Juma Duni, Deputy Secretary General of the opposition Civic United Front (CUF).

"Things need to change - they tried to raise the price but that was not enough. There is too much competition from the smugglers," he added. "There has always been a squeeze on the farmers' price but they have grabbed an opportunity because there is someone ready on the other side."

An agricultural analyst agreed, saying that in the past there had been a lot of money because of the dominance of Zanzibar cloves on the world market. However, this has diminished in terms of earnings for the government from being about 65 percent in the 1970's to only 2 -3 percent now.

"To try to cover the parastatal's costs, it [the government] has tried to squeeze the growers and hence the recourse to smuggling, where the earnings can be up to 200 percent more than through the official channels," he told IRIN. "There are calls for a review of the overall clove marketing and this should be made a priority for Zanzibar."

Jim Adams, former World Bank country representative in Tanzania, believes there is a strong case for a liberalisation of the clove markets in Zanzibar.

"There have been some historical reasons, but I think much along the lines of liberalisation on the mainland," he told IRIN. "We [the World Bank] think that paying the farmers a competitive market price for cloves is the way, both to increase farmers' incomes but also to increase the overall incomes too, because that will stimulate increased production and, we hope, increased income for the country as well."

Other than acknowledging the significance of the clove industry, Zanzibar's ministry of trade, industry, marketing and tourism declined to comment as the minister is out of the country.