NAKURU, Kenya, Jan 14 – East Africa’s farm equipment sharing platform, TingA is closing the agricultural arm after one of the investors repossessed its tractors.
TingA management said some financiers among them one who had invested Sh200 million pulled out their financing making it to sustain the agricultural arm which involved renting equipment to farmers at subsidised prices.
The firm’s Agricultural Projects Coordinator, Consolata Wangui said TingA also laid down some of its staff as it scaled down the agriculture project.
In a press release to the media, Wangui said pulling out its agricultural equipment from the market would affect thousands of farmers who have been depending on the equipment renter.
“This will also affect various citizens, especially farmers in most parts of the country who directly or indirectly depended on the firm for livelihood,” she said.
The equipment renter has been renting out farm equipment and implements such as planters and harvesters.
“Due to various challenges we have faced with owning farm equipment we are shifting from owning farming equipment and hence cost of ploughing to increase as we will be now relying on other tractor owners to mechanize farms,” said Wangui.
She said the firm will be shifting its focus from owning the agricultural mechanisation space with the exception of potato transport and storage following hard economic times and lender aggression.
”The firm secured funding from various stakeholders for impact leasing which debt was to be serviced for a period agreed by respective stakeholders, these funds were used to purchase various farm equipment which were dedicated to various projects in various parts of the country including Hola, Bura, Meru, Narok,” she said.
She explained that TingA settled on the aforementioned areas because there was limited access to such services.
“The firm has not made much to enable them pay off the loans and support the program and the new development will give the company space to recover from financial constraints,” she added.
Wangui clarified that other tractor and farm implement owners will continue using their portal and app without any interference.
“The firm has a tractor hailing app and online portal that tractor and other farm implement owners use to reach farmers,” she said.
She urged farmers to continue using the platforms to order tractors instead of going through the struggle of looking for tractor owners through other means.
She said the regional renter was currently in negotiations with various stakeholders to help them offset the current loans to enable it keep its mechanisation in operations.
