Investor Incentive certificates in Tanzania to be issued in a day, says TIC

Dar es Salaam. Investors can now access their Certificate of Incentives within one day as the Tanzania Investment Centre (TIC) adopts an online system to expedite the process.

This will be a massive improvement from the previous system when it took between five and seven days for one to access one’s Certificate of Incentives.

TIC executive director Maduhu Kazi said in Dar es Salaam at the weekend that the improvement was possible after the investment promotion agency created a modern system, ‘Online One Stop Shop System.’

The system is an Information and Communication Technology-based platform that enables investors to swiftly access TIC services online.

Through the system, an investor can apply for a Certificate of Incentive at a place of their convenience and thereby reducing corrupt practices that could come in through a communication between investors and public servants.

“This system will also increase the efficiency for document protection and enable TIC to provide its services within a very short period,” he said at the weekend.

Through the recent amendments governing issuance of work permits to expatriates, the government has introduced the Online Work Permits Applications and Issuance System (OWAIS) which is connected to the immigration department to allow an investor to get only one permit for work and residence within one day. This is possible if all required documents were submitted to the relevant authorities.

TIC was now giving a priority to the attraction of investors in manufacturing, aiming at ensuring that the country had enough industrial base that would simplify the value addition of agriculture products. Special emphasis was also being put on production of fertilizers, clothes, fisheries equipment, sugar industries, cooking oil including, production of Personal Protective Equipment for diseases such as Covid-19.

Presently, TIC has set aside a total of 159,720 hectares of land in 273 locations for investment purposes. Tanzanians have also submitted to TIC a total of 9,240 hectares of land for use by investors.

Land for industrials parks is available in Dar es Salaam Region, Coast, Mafinga, Morogoro and Mwanza.

During the past few months, TIC has registered a total of 235 new projects, valued at $3.3 billion. Once implemented, they will create a total of 36,849 new jobs.

A breakdown of the projects show that Dar es Salaam is leading with 99 of the 235 while Coast, Mwanza, Dodoma, Arusha and Shinyanag come in second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth respectively with 34, 15, 13, 12 and 11 projects respectively. The remaining regions and the number of investments projects in brackets include: Mara (9), Iringa (8), Tanga (8), Morogoro (7), Geita (4), Lindi (3), Ruvuma (3), Kagera (2) while all the other remaining regions have one each.

The increase in projects was a result of efforts by the government to improve the business climate.

Between April and June this year, TIC registered 84 project, being 68 percent more than the 50 project that were registered for the entire 2020 calendar year.