By Dativa Minja
THE National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has said the country's industrial sector is dominated by small and medium industries.
The NBS preliminary study aimed to assess the current industrial sector shows that large industries make up less than 10 per cent of the 80,969 total industries in the country as of July this year.
Briefing the media in Dar es Salaam on Monday, the Industry and Trade Minister Prof Kitila Mkumbo said the factories are divided into four groups where 77,730 are micro and small scale industries, 684 medium and 618 largest industries.
He said the micro and small scale industries employ one to 49 workers, medium scale factories employ 50 to 59 and largest industries employ 100 people and above.
"The micro and small scale industries have capital range between 5m/- and 200m/-, medium scale industries 200m/- to 800m/-," Prof Mkumbo said.
He said 208 industries that are in Dar es Salaam have 800m/- capital and above.
He said the government has started to revive industries by searching for new investors that would ultimately reduce imports and foreign exchange spending as well as cut down exports of raw materials.
"Once we are completed we will stop exporting raw materials because we will be able to process and export the finished products. We will also be processing and exporting value added goods," he noted.
He said the government would also look at the garments industries to reduce importation of clothes. For example, the textile factories like Musoma Textile Mills (T) Limited (MUTEX) are doing well.
"Small industries are the mainstay of the nation and we do not want to let them die. We will help them so that our products can compete in the domestic and foreign markets," said Prof Mkumbo.
He said also that the government is encouraging and ensuring that factories and traders are registered with barcode as it is important to identify Tanzanian products.
He said ten years have elapsed since when Tanzania started using the barcode system but only few factories and farmers use the system thus making many products unrecognizable in the market.
"This year we will do a thorough assessment of the use of barcodes to see how we can use it for our benefit. Currently few entrepreneurs and smallholder farmers use barcode but we can include them in the quality system through the Tanzania Bureau of Standard (TBS)," said Prof Mkumbo.
No comments :
Post a Comment