Tanzania loses 160 mln USD from undervaluation of imports: official

A Tanzanian senior cabinet minister said on Thursday the east African nation lost 160 million US dollars in 2016 from undervaluation of imported products.

Charles Mwijage, the Minister for Industry, Trade and Investment, said importers undervalued imported goods to evade tax.

The minister was speaking in the commercial capital Dar es Salaam at the official opening of a five-day exhibition of goods produced by Tanzanian local industries.

He said in order to do away with cheap imports it was high time the country, the second largest economy in the east African region after Kenya, manufactured own high quality goods locally.

"Time has come for us to build strong industries that will be able to produce high quality goods that will compete with cheap imports," said the minister.

He said it was possible to achieve the industrialization drive if industrial stakeholders joined hands and established modern industries that would produce goods of high quality.

Mwijage said products which met international standards needed high capital investments, a venture that required operators to join hands.

"To build high-tech industries with capacity to manufacture high standard goods could take long time but we should expect to achieve this mission one day," said Mwijage.

Leordgar Tenga, the Executive Director of the Confederation of Tanzania Industries, appealed to the government of Tanzania to improve the business environment in order to attract more investors.

He said tax multiplicity, power and infrastructure problems were major hurdles that made doing business in Tanzania very difficult. Endit