Investors, government usher in new beginning

BERNARD LUGONGO

TIC’s Executive Director Geoffrey Mwambe

DIFFERENT government agencies working under investment facilitation docket have promised investors and business community to clear hitches that retard investment pace and doing business in the country.

Their assurance came up after investors and business people who convened for a meeting in Dar es Salaam raised concerns against procedures holding them back from investing and doing business easily.

They mentioned some of the hitches as including red tape, nepotism, corruption and sluggish operations of the government agencies in charge of investment facilitation.

The meeting was organised by the Tanzania Investment Centre (TIC) and involved the industrialists, business people and various public institutions such as Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA), Tanzania Bureau of Standards (TBS), National Environment Management Council (NEMC), Tanzania Electric Supply Company (TANESCO) and others.

TIC’s Executive Director Geoffrey Mwambe assured the investors that their sentiments would be addressed under the introduced ‘One Stop Shop’ at the centre whereby representatives of all government agencies responsible to facilitate investment have offices within the TIC.

“We are taking the concerns and going to work on them for improvement,” Mr Mwambe assured.

TBS Acting Director General Dr Egid Mubofu encouraged the industrialists to contact him directly when facing any challenges, promising to address the issue they raised over delays when they want to register new products with the TBS.

In the meeting some investors accused some staff of those government agencies of deliberately harassing or disturbing them for enticing corruption.

Executive Director of the Tanzania Private Sector Foundation (TPSF), Mr Geofrey Simbeye, said as President John Magufuli insists on industrialisation agenda, the government agencies should help him improve environment for investment.

“The environment becomes so unattractive when the authorities embrace enforcement method, something which creates rooms for corruption,” Mr Simbeye said.

He stated that the corruption at the central government level has significantly reduced after Dr Magufuli came to power, but such practices still largely persist at the lower level of government agencies. Mr Subhash Patel, Chairman of the Motisun Group, warned that industrialisation agenda would be in jeopardy if nepotism exists in the institutions entrusted to facilitate the investment.

“I operate over 30 manufacturing entities, and importing raw materials is one of my major areas, but at the port some workers of these agencies forget their roles and work as if they are police officers to create unnecessary disturbance,” he said.

He suggested that the government staff in the fields to be trained on how they are suppose to operate in a way that will facilitate doing business and investment in a country instead of creating disturbances.

Ms Jennifer Bash, Chief Executive Officer of the Alaska Tanzania, said she was disappointed over what she explained as lack of transparency when new business regulations introduced in the municipalities, something which results into hostile relationship between the authorities and the business community.

“The authorities should communicate those new regulations to us, because we are punished over something we are not aware of,” she said.

She further told the TANESCO to ensure that they speed up connection of power to newly established industries.