TANZANIA’S re-export trade has risen by 108.5 per cent in a year, thanks to some of the land-locked neighbouring countries.
The country’s re-exports to Zambia,
Zimbabwe, Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Comoros has increased as
traders from these nations find it cheap to buy from Tanzania than
travelling to the Far East.
Bank of Tanzania (BoT) figures show that
the re-export business increased from 168.6 million US dollars in
October 2014 to 351.7 million in October 2015.
“The increase was on account of
improvement in re-exports to neighbouring countries,” according to the
central bank’s November economic review.
However, on month-tomonth basis the
trade went down by 3.1 per cent from 26.4 million US dollars as of
September to 25.6 million US dollars as of October.
On other hand, economists say that the
re-exports business is an opportunity waste which was supposed to be
manufactured locally to become direct exports.
Confederation of Tanzania Industries
Director of Policy and Research, Mr Hussein Kamote, said yesterday that
the bottleneck was to look for reason for the increasing re-exports
business since it isn’t a good economic trend. “I think it isn’t a good
trend,” Mr Kamote said, arguing that “this is an opportunity lost for
local manufacturers.”
“The way forward now is for the
manufacturers to look for what type of business is re-exported and start
processing it locally.” He said a quick analysis shows re-export
business concerns mostly garments, shoes, electronic devices— telephones
and radios, among others.
“If we happen to manufacture them
locally we will increase our ratio of export revenue, as most countries
in developed world do not re-export,” Mr Kamote said. The re-exports
trade does not come from exports registered at processing zones.
Trade from those zones, even locally, is
termed as direct exports. Mid this year, the Export Processing Zones
Authority (EPZA) announced that exports from lincensed companies were
expected to grow by 36.36 per cent to 300 million US dollars as the
regulator eyes to register 25 more companies to reach 155 by the end of
this year.
The BoT export figures show that the
manufacturing sector sales abroad increased by 8.0 per cent from 1.21
billion US dollars in October last year to 1.31billion US dollars in
October this year.
On month-to-month basis, the sector
exports have risen by 81.2 per cent from 81.6 million US dollars as of
September to 147.8milion US dollars as of October
No comments:
Post a Comment