Posted on December, 18, 2018 at 09:52 am
SOME 90 per cent of Kigoma’s cross border traders lack expertise of import and export to shutdown opportunities pushing them using unauthorised crossing points.
Institute of Best Dialogue, Business Consultant, Dr Goodluck Urassa said lack of understanding of cross-border laws increase the traders uses non-official routes to cross two countries.
“The lack of (cross-border) knowledge leads to illegal activities such as tax evasion and smuggling,” Dr Urassa said when representing a report describe the obstacles and barriers Kigoma traders faced when trading in borders across Great Lakes countries.
The report that covers 5 000 cross border traders showed that the illegal trading continue to flourish despite the good intention the government want to formalized the business.
“Despite, the government intention to promote formalization of cross-border trading, the informal trade contributes to persist,” Dr Urassa said.
The report revealed that out of the sample 71 per cent of the respondents did not understand the cross-border business procedures used by 12 agencies dealing in import and export trading.
On top of that 5 7 per cent businesses, the report showed, were not registered. The conference was organised by Tanzania Chamber of Commerce, Investment and Agriculture (TCCIA) Kigoma chapter.
Traders under their umbrella of TCCIA said the government was still dragging its feet on solving challenges facing the cross-border trading.
The conference was also attended by all stakeholders from Kigoma and some government officials. Speaking at the meeting, the Chairman of the Kigoma region businessman forum, Mr Raymond Ndabiyegetse, said that policy, regulatory and procedures required for cross border trading are many, lengthy and involved a hectic documentation exercise.
Mr Ndabiyegetse has it that other challenge was language barrier since cross-border forms are in English while traders are not conversant with that. He also said there are “too many road blocks” thus discoursing traders to use formal routes.
Traders are also reporting, according to him, to be treated poorly by some of the agencies hence resolve into also using unauthorised routes.
Source: Daily News