CTI: Business friendly govt key for growth

Dar es Salaam. The government has been advised to ensure drivers of industrialisation are in place to achieve and linked to attain the targets.

There should be hard and soft infrastructure.

Hard infrastructure includes roads, railways, ports, air and water system while soft infrastructure such as human resources and skills and finance.

Confederation of Tanzania Industries chairman Samuel Nyantahe told BusinessWeek that general unfrastructure is not strategically targeted to facilitate industrialisation. Therefore, infrastructure development should be strategic, targeting priority industries and covering all stages of the value chains.

Tanzania’s industrialisation and socioeconomic transformation needs a business friendly government as resources must be mobilised into a few channels which can catalyse industrial growth. “A reform should prioritise putting in place a public service that is supportive of industrialisation, corruption-free and determined to improve the business environment and reduce the cost of doing business,” Dr Nyantahe said. According to him, Tanzania has infrastructure challenges to facilitate rapid economic growth through industrialisation.

Except for major trunk roads, Tanzania’s level of access to

infrastructure and its quality is worse than that of its neighbours.

That calls for the need to undertake massive infrastructure improvements to support industrialisation. The railway network should be rehabilitated for efficient operations. More locomotives and wagons should be bought.

“The current railway system is dilapidated and cannot handle required quantities of cargo at a reasonable speed. The Tanzania Railway Limited should work on this at least for a short term of between one to two years.” Moreover, delayed cargo clearance and high wharfage charges at ports hinder imports.

He said they recommend special incentives such as a long term grace

period of 21 days for importers offloading transit cargo and only 14 days for local cargo through Tanga and Mtwara ports.

He noted that there is need to strengthen the application of ICT in cargo clearing and tracking in port operations and calculation of wharfage charges basing on volume or weight.

He would like the port dwell time to be reduced from 14 days to a maximum of four days and establish a single window for clearing of cargo through the use of ICT and relocating internal container depots to outside the city in one or two years.

He recommended expansion and construction of more berths for storage of containers and loose cargo as well as procuring and installing more port handling equipment for loading and offloading

especially for non-containerised cargo. He said despite massive investments in road construction, more is needed to cope with transportation demand and increase access and connectivity.

Transport delays should be reduced and costs lowered.

He said regular maintenance of roads within and around industrial

areas was needed and the number of weighbridges along

highways to two at entry and exit points reduced.

Unscheduled checkpoints along the roads should be abolished.

CTI has recommended that tarmac trunk roads connecting all regions in Tanzania be constructed and feeder roads interconnected to highways be improved.

That should include expanding all trunk roads to a minimum of four lanes as well as construction of flyovers on busy intersections starting with Kamata, Ubungo, Chang’ombe, Mwenge, Magomeni, Akiba, Fire and Selander Bridge

He spoke about unreliable power supply outages and uncompetitive tariffs. CTI recommends restoration of transmission and distribution electricity infrastructure to reduce transmission losses, outages and fluctuations.

He called on the Energy and Water Utilities Regulatory Authority to effectively regulate price of natural gas and speed up Rural Electrification Programme to encourage industrialisation in those parts of Tanzania.