TANZANIA is planning to boost business flow to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) through Lake Tanganyika by addressing non-tariff trade barriers. The non-tariff trade barriers are cited as major impediments to movement of goods and people between the two bordered countries. Industry and Trade Deputy Minister Eng. Stella Manyanya said recently that the plans include proper utilisation of the marine vessels voyaging in Lake Tanganyika-- providing reliable transport to the citizens of the two nations. “MV Lihemba is the main ship currently traversing Lake Tanganyika but the plan is to have more ships to simplify business from Tanzania and DRC. This will go hand in hand with modernising ports in Rukwa and Katavi regions. The move is aiming at granting people with more opportunities to trade minus obstacles,” she said. Lake Tanganyika is the second deepest freshwater body in the world as it has a depth of 1,470 metres on average. Apart from the envisaged construction of new ships, the deputy minister said that other infrastructures including road networks were in the making and that the two governments of Tanzania and DRC were communicating on the best ways of ensuring that there is a dependable and passable road network connecting the lake side areas with other parts of DRC. “The major impediment is lack of dependable road network from Lake Tanganyika to the Tanganyika province in DRC, however, this is also being discussed and soon will bear fruit,” she said. Tanzania trades with DRC in various sectors including agricultural...

The Kenya National Highway Authority (KeNHA) has started the process to construct part of the 460-kilometre East African Coastal Corridor development project. Tenders were advertised for the two phases of the 13.5km Mombasa—Mtwapa (A7) section, which entails the construction of a four-lane dual carriageway. The works include construction of a grade separated junction, service roads, storm water drains, major and minor drainage structures, access roads and social amenities along the road. The project has already received funds from the African Development Bank (AfDB) and a grant from the European Union. Last June, Gabriel Negatu, East Africa director general of AfDB said construction of the road would begin this year. “Both the Kenya and Tanzania governments have finalised all their requirements to pave way for the construction of the coastal highway,” Mr Negatu said. The Coastline Transnational Highway project, conceived more than two decades ago, covers Bagamoyo-Tanga-Horohoro on the Tanzania side and Lunga Lunga-Mombasa-Mtwapa-Malindi on the Kenyan side, and is expected to cost $751 million. According to an agreement signed last November, AfDB will finance 70 per cent of the highway and the governments of Kenya and Tanzania will cover 30 per cent. Last December, AfDB approved of the $384.22 million financing package for the road construction a few months after the EU gave a grant of $33.41 million or 7.7 per cent of the total project cost to the government of Kenya. The road is a priority item in AfDB’s Eastern Africa Regional Integration Strategy and the Country Strategy Papers...

The UK this past week opened a new chapter in its relations with African countries at a summit to set the tone for the country’s trade and diplomatic ties with the continent after exiting the European Union. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson hosted leaders from 21 African countries in London, where 27 deals worth an estimated $8.5 billion (£6.5 billion) were signed at the UK-Africa Summit held on January 20. The summit came just months after Japan and Russia hosted African leaders in their respective capitals last year. “We want to build a new future as a global free trading nation, that’s what we are doing now and that’s what we will be embarking on, on 31st of January,” Mr Johnson told the gathering in London. “But I want to intensify and expand that trade in ways that go far beyond what we sell you or you sell us.” The tone of the meeting signalled a shift in Mr Johnson’s attitude towards Africa. Eight years ago, as mayor of London, he wrote a commentary in the Spectator Magazine suggesting that Africa would have been better off if the UK was still its colonial master. Britain expects to start an 18-month transition from being a member of the EU beginning January 31, to being an independent country capable of signing bilateral or multilateral trade deals. Britain may have to renegotiate all trade deals initially signed under the EU, including with African countries. In the EAC, for example, Britain had been a...

With the AfCFTA expected to increase intra-African trade by 52 per cent by the year 2022, the journey towards making it a reality is in high gear. The Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement seeks to have the removal of tariffs on 90 per cent of goods traded within the continent. Towards this, UNCTAD and the African Union have developed an online platform to help remove non-tariff barriers to trade in Africa. The tool became operational on January 13. Moving goods across the continent Traders and businesses moving goods across the continent can now instantly report the challenges they encounter, such as quotas, excessive import documents or unjustified packaging requirements. To improve the movement of goods across the continent and reduce the cost importers and exporters in the region face, the tool will help African governments monitor and eliminate such challenges which slow trade costing the continent billions of dollars annually. The African Union’s Agenda 2063 seeks to transform Africa into a global powerhouse of the future. The need to envision a long-term 50-year development trajectory for Africa is important as the continent needs to revise and adapt its development agenda due to ongoing structural transformations; increased peace and reduction in the number of conflicts; renewed economic growth and social progress; the need for people-centred development, gender equality and youth empowerment; changing global contexts such as increased globalization and the ICT revolution; the increased unity of Africa which makes it a global power to be reckoned with and capable of rallying support around its own...

Speaking at the event to mark 71 years of India’s independence at the weekend, deputy minister for Foreign Affairs and EA Cooperation Dr Damas Ndumbaro said Tanzania and India were brotherly nations and will see to it that the ties remain cemented. "Tanzania and India had long time excellent ties that began during the period of the Father of the Nation, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere and India’s Jawaharlal Nehru, the ties that have strengthened social, economic and political development,” said Dr Ndumbaro. Currently the economies of both countries have been growing spurring the strengthening of diplomatic ties between the two. India has been a good development partner for Tanzania in various sectors including tourism, water, health, technology and education. India’s assistance in the water sector has enabled the distribution safe and clean water in the city of Dar es Salaam as well as expansion of water treatment plant in Zanzibar. In the education sector, Tanzania and India have signed the agreement to cooperate in building a technical centre and provide assistance for developing universities in Zanzibar that target in the provision of skills targeting women with low education. For his part the Indian High Commissioner in Tanzania Amb. Shri Sanjiv Kohli thanked Tanzania government for the solidarity it has been extending to India saying the unity has been a stimulus for the development of the two nations. "We must remember that union is strength and our goal is to live in peace, harmony and solidarity for the economic growth of our...

The Epower forum, recently hosted at Nairobi’s Movenpick Hotel, unfolded the key issues regarding the way in which E-commerce can enable cross border trade for women in light of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AFCFTA). In attendance were over 150 women owned SME’s. The basis of the event touched on how cross border trade can be made simpler, more cost effective, whilst creating new business opportunities and enhancing social development. This comes at a time where the advancement of technology is at an unprecedented level. Eric Wainaina, from Africa’s talking, said “It is annoying to hear, that Africa is not at par with the rest of the world concerning technology. It’s not true” With regards to how E-commerce is relying on technology, it was made increasingly clear that the uptake of more technology will allow for seamless patterns, instead for operating in a fragmented manner, ensuring more out of the value chains. This was emphasized by Gloria Atuheirwe, Director Women in Trade East Africa, “ICT to facilitate trade, automating and making trade easier. ICT to be the building blocks for improving outreach, processes and efficiency”. Outlining trade issues from two perspectives, barriers and cost of trade, alluding to how technology can ease up those processes. Through the inception of the Epower forum, women globally have learnt how to plug into E-commerce learning to harness the power of internet skills. Source: CIO East Africa

Kenyan traders can now access the continent’s investment regulatory data on one platform following the launch of an e-portal aimed enhancing ease of doing business. The tool, tradebarriers.africa, has been developed by United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the African Union, and also seeks to make trade less costly for local investors. The platform became operational on January 13. UNCTAD and African Union (AU) said Kenyan traders and businesses moving goods across the continent will be able to report the challenges they encounter, such as quotas, excessive import documents or unjustified packaging requirements. UNCTAD and the AU trained 60 public officials and business representatives from across Africa on how to use the tool in December 2019 in Nairobi. “Non-tariff barriers are the main obstacles to trade between African countries,” said Ms Pamela Coke-Hamilton, director of UNCTAD’s trade division. “That’s why the success of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) depends in part on how well governments can track and remove them,” she said, referring to the agreement signed by African governments to create a single, continentwide market for goods and services. Complaints logged on the platform will be monitored by government officials in each nation and a special coordination unit that’s housed in the AfCFTA secretariat. The unit will be responsible for verifying a complaint. Once verified, officials in the countries concerned will be tasked with addressing the issue within set timelines prescribed by the AfCFTA agreement. Kenya’s manufacturing sector is betting big on the Africa-wide...

By PAUL KIBUUKA From the discussion of the previous two parts of this mini-series on Tanzania’s import taxation regime and, in particular, the import taxes categorised therein, it is clear that the customs value (or, the Cost, Insurance and Freight (CIF))—primarily, the actual value of the goods when they are imported—hugely impacts the taxes that are payable during importation. For cases where the value of imported goods cannot be determined, section 37(2)(a) and 122 of the East African Community Customs Management Act, 2004 (hereinafter, ‘EACCMA 2004’), read together with the Fourth Schedule thereto, provides for ad-valorem valuation. In this regard, what may be used is the transaction value of identical goods, which is the price actually paid or payable for the goods when sold for export at or about the time of valuation. But what are “identical goods”? Part 1 of the Fourth Schedule to the EACCMA 2004 defines identical goods to mean “goods which are the same in all respects, including physical characteristics, quality and reputation”. However, minor differences in appearance are not sufficient to preclude goods from being considered as identical. Still, there are cases where the customs value of imported goods cannot be ascertained from the transaction value of identical goods. Here, the transaction value of similar goods—sold for export and exported at or about the same time as the goods being valued—may be used to arrive at the customs value. The term “similar goods” is defined in Part 1 of the Fourth Schedule to the EACCMA...

A decade since it came into force, the East African Community Common Market Protocol, is going through a reality check. This week, Uganda lodged a formal protest against Kenya, over blockage of its milk exports. Kenya also accuses Uganda of imposing hefty duties on some of its exports especially beverages. Tanzania has been involved in several trade skirmishes with Kenya even as they were united in disputing Uganda’s sugar surplus and for a while blocking Ugandan sugar from their markets. In a case of selective amnesia, Uganda also does not believe Tanzania has a rice surplus although many Ugandan entrepreneurs rent land in southern Tanzania to grow rice. When the common market was conceived, it was believed free trade would be a vehicle for efficient allocation of resources across the economic spectrum. For instance, free movement of labour would allow skills to move from areas of surplus to areas in the community that had a deficit. Theoretically, application of those skills would over time raise the productive capacity of such an economy, creating a degree of parity with the rest of the region. What the framers might have anticipated but did not state, was that open markets would trigger a realignment of the regional economy as investors look for the most cost efficient production bases. Uganda got a taste of this early on when multinationals Bata and British American Tobacco shifted their manufacturing operations from Uganda to Kenya. This seeming loss has however, been more than compensated for by the...

THE government has said it is taking measures to tackle non tariff barriers for Tanzanian businesses at border posts, in response to the recent complaints aired by local traders. The Deputy Minister for Trade and Industries, Eng. Stella Manyanya, told the ‘Daily News’ on Thursday that local traders were facing difficulties in shipping goods to neighbouring countries due to some unnecessary bureaucracies at borders. Eng Manyanya noted that Tanzania has ratified various protocols that require each member country to remove bureaucratic non-tariff barriers to trade. The Deputy Ministersaid apart from such agreements, still traders were facing challenges in transporting goods outside the country. “As we speak, a trader transporting 30 tons of maize flour to the DRC has beestranded for days at Zambia’s Nakonde entry border post until the Zambian Minister for Agriculture signs the permit,” she said. She said the consignment could not be allowed to cross the border, though it was not meant for Zambia, but the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The deputy minister was concerned that was happening despite the fact that the government has signed trade pacts with East African Community (EAC) as well as the SouthernAfrican Development Community (SADC) member states and that those agreements call for removal of non-tariff barriers so as toallow smooth business flow between nations. “Non-tariff barriers are still hampering smooth movements of goods from borders leading to huge economic setbacks,” she said. “Some of our traders who export cattle to neighbouring countries are forced to hire vehicles from those...