TCCIA: Tanzania not exploiting trade chances offered by AGOA

from IPP Media

By Perege Gumbo

Tanzania`s exploitation of business opportunities offered by the American African Growth Opportunity Act (AGOA) has been minimal for what the business community cited as infrastructural problems, calling for the government in collaboration with the private sector, to address the hitches.

AGOA is a programme designed by the United States government to help African countries access US markets duty free with a view to increasing the poor nations� exports to build capacity in the countries� poverty reduction efforts.

Retired Tanzania Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture (TCCIA) vice-president Basil Saprapasen said in an interview recently that the AGOA arrangement, which ends in 2015, had not been successful because of a number of reasons including poor infrastructure.


He said the US market was highly specialised and needed higher technology that many Tanzanian producers and manufacturers lacked.

``Our county lacks many essential supportive infrastructures required to perform better in AGOA, such as reliable communication and transport infrastructure to make timely delivery of consignments,`` he said.

On the other hand, he said monetary support from banking and other financial institutions for exports was not easily available to allow local exporters transact smoothly as they produced for export to the US under the AGOA programme.

Instead he urged local producers to first of all concentrate on improving the quality of their products as well as build competitive capacity within the region before thinking of exporting to the US.

Mr Saprasasen said even the political will was low since very few politicians were engaged in commercial farming, which could spur Tanzania�s export performance.

``Unlike our politicians, those in neighbouring countries are fully engaged in commercial farming while Tanzanian politicians seem to prefer investing in real estate to agriculture,`` he said.

The objective of producing for AGOA was to generate foreign currency which, in Saprapasen�s view, was no longer an issue since there was cheap and readily available foreign currency locally, which discouraged exports.

He cited an example of Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA)`s Import Declaration Forms (IDF) which were being bought at USD 10 as an indication of how the government itself was transacting using dollars, thereby setting a bad precedent.

However, the government, through Finance minister Zakhia Meghji recently prohibited transactions in foreign currency, saying conversion using appropriate prevailing exchange rates should be used to allow the value of the Tanzania shilling to rise.