Mr Bakhresa assured the PM that his company plans to set up a fruit processing industry in the Lake Zone since farmers there are forced to travel all the way to Dar es Sa-laam to sell their produce.

“From October 15, we will start receiving fruits from Kahama Dis-trict in Shinyanga Region and sur-rounding areas; we hope to receive about 30 trucks of the produce per day.

After Kahama, we will start receiving the crop from Coast and southern regions.

If we set up factory in the Lake Zone, we will help farmers to avoid transporting their produce from there to Dar es Salaam.

From the plant there, we will produce con-centrated juice, which will be trans-ported to Dar es Salaam for further processing,” the mogul told the pre-mier.

Mr Bakhresa added that the company is determined to continue processing food crops in the south-ern regions.

The company employs over 8,000 people in Tanzania and in other countries where it has invest-ments, noting that about 180 Tan-zanians are working in Bakhresa industries outside Tanzania and are being paid as expatriates.

Bakhresa Group boasts of food processing plants in Rwanda, Bu-rundi and Mozambique in addition to Malawi, Zimbabwe and South Africa.

For his part, Mr Majaliwa as-sured Mr Bakhresa that the Fifth Phase Government is committed to working with the private sector to boost industrialisation.

“The government recognises the contribution of industrialists in boosting the economy; keep on set-ting more industries,” Mr Majaliwa said.

He urged Mr Bakhresa to ven-ture into other areas such as hospi-tality industry to boost the economy.

Bakhresa Group is one of the leading industrial houses in Tanza-nia and East Africa.

It started from a humble begin-ning with a small restaurant in Dar es Salaam in the mid-seventies, gradually emerging as one of the prominent family-owned business groups in the region.