One-stop centres in the offing

Dar es Salaam. The government is planning to establish one-stop investment centres in regions and districts to speed up processes and encourage investment across the country.

The centres will bring together all regulatory bodies responsible for investment at the local government level. Their role will be to help investors get various permits, licences and approvals through one window, the Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office (Investment), Ms Angellah Kairuki, said yesterday.

The minister said this in Dar es Salaam yesterday when she met Tanzania Private Sector Foundation (TPSF) board members.

“We are thinking of using our postal offices in districts and regions as investment centres as is being done in neighbouring Kenya. This is meant to attract more investment in regions and districts,” she noted.

Ms Kairuki said when the centres become operational, there will no longer be the need for potential investors to visit several offices seeking for licences and other documents that are necessary for establishing a business or an investment.

“We are also borrowing a leaf from an existing TIC One Stop Facilitation Centre which is currently helping investors to obtain various permits, licences and approvals through one window,” she said.

The centres will be providing services like company incorporation, issuance of tax payer identification number, provision of industrial certificates, granting land derivative rights, delivery of work permits as well as residence permits, issuance of environment certificate and provision of standards certificate.

“If the plan is well implemented, it will resolve a number of challenges affecting the implementation of industrialisation drive targeting 100 factories in every region. The country would also perform better in the World Bank’s Easy of Doing Business reports,” she noted.

The centres, also according to her, will reduce costs of registering and obtaining the required documentation to invest at local government authority’s level. The plan will go hand in hand with an investment evaluation, aiming at establishing the current status of investments.

The evaluation will identify all local and foreign investments existing in the country and how much they are worth, and identifying areas where more investment is needed

During the meeting, the TPSF listed nine major issues that need to be urgently addressed to improve the business and investment environments in the country.

The issues include the implementation of the Blueprint and the Private Sector Development Policy, which aim at easing the business and investment environment in the country.

TPSF board chairman Salum Shamte also urged the government to increase incentives for investment, shorten procedures for registering new investments and access to capital and loans, promote and attract more investments in the agricultural sector, put an end to harsh treatment of investors, engage the private sector in implementation of Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects and frequent dialogues between the government and the business community.

The business community’s umbrella body now consists of more than 200 members, with 96 corporate companies in 14 sectors, serving more than 5 million Tanzanians, contributing more than 75 per cent of the country’s GDP.