THE TBL Group has announced plans to construct a US $50 million (about 109bn/-) malting plant in Iringa Region to cater for increasing demand of malt at the Dar es Salaam and Mbeya Breweries.
According to the Managing Director of
the Group, Mr Roberto Jarrin, the company has been spending 31bn/- each
year to import 19,000 tonnes of malt, a key ingredient in manufacturing
of beer. “At present, we are still discussing with the government on the
possibility of granting us excise duty remission for locally sourced
raw materials, particularly malt.
“If the government gives us a green
light on the remission the project will take 18 months to accomplish,”
Mr Jarrin told journalists in Dar es Salaam yesterday when presenting an
overview of the company’s performance in 2015 and the outlook for the
year 2016/2017.
Mr Jarrin stressed that the tax
remission is crucial to make the envisaged malting plant commercially
viable. “Other countries in the East African region have been doing the
same to encourage local sourcing of raw materials,” he stated.
The TBL Group comprises three companies
namely the Tanzania Breweries Limited (TBL), Tanzania Distilleries
Limited (TDL) and Dar Brew Limited. “Our malting plant in Moshi
(Kilimanjaro Region) has the capacity to produce 15,000 tonnes of malt
which is used to produce beer at Arusha and Mwanza Breweries,” he
explained.
He pointed further that the company had
trained farmers in Iringa on cultivation of barley in pilot projects
which will be scaled-up once the malting plant is constructed.
On the other hand, Mr Jarrin said the
Group has paid about 2.3trl/- in taxes during the past ten years, noting
further that the company has created over two million direct and
indirect jobs for people involved in the supply chain.
The TBL boss complained however that per
capita consumption of beer in Tanzania was low due to among others low
incomes for majority of the people. “Studies have shown that it takes an
average of 4.5 hours of work for a Tanzanian to buy one bottle of beer
while in South Africa it takes 0.4 hour. That is to say beer is
expensive relative to the incomes of the majority of the people,” he
explained.
He added; “The other factors that have
stagnated the beer business include prevalence of a large market for
informal alcohol as well as lack of incentives to encourage local
production of key raw materials such as malt.”
Mr Jarrin complained further that
increases on excise duty are not aligned with the rate of inflation,
proposing that the government should peg the duty at 5 per cent in line
with the existing inflation rate of 5.1 per cen
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