WHEN one hears that up to 603m/- has been spent on the development of a market in some district and administrators are persuaded that farmers and traders will be the foremost beneficiaries, there is a natural urge not to jump to conclusions.

There have been instances where markets are built and then remain white elephants as the supposedly targeted population just can’t move in, as it was just seen as merely meant to sideline them from much-frequented streets.

This is an illustration not just of how wrongly markets are at times planned but also shows why planning can be missing in advanced market economies, for it often means doing someone else’s work.

It would thus be possible that a new market can help to improve livelihoods in specific areas but it takes a lot of coincidence that local authorities actually select a place near the main communication arteries and especially major bus terminals.

What small traders will have lost is ability to trade freely on street sides, in small open spaces or right in road reserves or from where could be blocking shops or parking lots.

Small traders understand out of experience that doing business by literally blocking shops from view is improper, though municipal officials add queries like throwing wastes in drainage systems.

That is why it is some sort of wait-and-see game when one is told that more than 300 farmers and traders in Mpwapwa District are set to experience a significant economic turnaround following the construction of an agricultural produce market.

As has been the case with various trading centres built all over the country, many such facilities commonly often register low capacity utilisation owing to the big number of levies and taxes that anyone bringing in crops or some other goods stands to pay.

The result is that some of the commodities change hands in informal ways via dealers who take orders from buyers to look for sellers of specific kinds of produce, grain or gems.

While the government repeatedly talks of improving conditions of conducting business, and at one point actually scrapped hundreds of ‘nuisance’ levies and taxes especially in the agricultural sector as people want money for value in selling goods, not sharing out with local government coffers, most of these were restored.

There are levies that are admittedly unavoidable, examples including rent in respect of trading space in a market. However, there have been cases such space being re-rented to users who go about paying middlemen working for some dishonest public officials who are actually corruptly behind the holding of such business premises.

In such cloudy circumstances, a portion of such levies is thus properly remitted while much remains in individual pockets.