Govt challenged to revisit laws on small enterprises.

The Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA).

The government has been challenged to revisit its laws and regulations governing the registration and formalisation of small enterprises instead of focusing only on increasing tax collections.

 

The remark was made on Wednesday in Dar es Salaam by Chief Executive officer of President’s Delivery Bureau (PDB) Omari Issa at the launching of the formalisation and capacity building for small enterprises project organised by the Eastern and Southern African Universities Research Programme (ESAURP) in collaboration with Financial Sector Deepening Programme (FSDT)  

 

He said that there are cumbersome procedures which disappoint small entrepreneurs when it comes to registration of their businesses.

 

 “The problem of the government through TRA is that they only focus on transforming informal sector to increase revenue without considering the environment of  small  enterprises”  he said. He argued that informal sector pays taxes than formal sector but the problem is the taxes paid ends up in individual pockets instead of going to the government coffer.

 

Issa explained that to help informal sector the government should revisit its laws and regulations to be easily for the small enterprises to register their business and grow.

 

He mentioned some of hindrances as corruption, uncompleted statistics and competitiveness indexes as the causes of why Tanzania is fail to transform from informal to formal sector fruitful for a long time now.

 

For his part the executive director of ESAURP Prof T. L. Maliyamkono said that the main objective of the project is to publicise and promoting informal sector to transform to formal.

 

He said that informal sector is notably started growing from 1990s and includes a numbers of grassroots people so it is the high time now to help them transforming to formal sector.

 

“Most of Tanzanians work under informal sector so this group should be looked by two eyes to help small enterprises to transform into formal sector to increase government revenue and people’s income,” he said.

 

Prof Maliyamkono said that people should be trained to sharpen their skills and build confidence instead of depending on certifications.

 

 “When we produce many knowledgeable people in business sector we create self employment opportunities as well” he commented.

 

For his part the representative from FSDT Peter Kingu argued that though informal sector plays large role in the country’s economy yet small enterprises themselves are not keeping their records properly as 53 of their records are incomplete.

 

“This project will help small enterprises to know policies, legislatives, financial market integrations and access to financial institutions” he said.

 

The Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA) acting director for research and policy Adolf Ndunguru said that though there is improvement on TRA performance but there are some challenges which are discussable.

 

“The government though TRA is committed to work with any individual or group positively on formalisation process from informal to formal sector to help both peoples’ life and increasing revenue” he commented.