The Tanzania Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Agriculture (TCCIA) has launched training programme aims at building internal capacity for staff on issuance of electronic Certificate of Origin (eCOs) for all export goods manufactured and processed in the country.
Upon completion of the training, TCCIA staffs will be able to process the certificates of origin electronically through computers, or mobile devices (including tablets and smartphones) replacing the current manual processing of documents for goods exportation .
According to TCCIA president Paul Koyi the online-based issuance of electronic certificates of origin was officially launched in February 2014, however, this initiative was not implemented due to lack of knowledge among TCCIA’s staff on how to offer such services.
Koyi said the current manual issuance of the export documents, among other challenges, consumes the business community’s time by physically moving between different offices collecting documents and to obtain necessary approvals.
Again, under the current manual system, the business community incurs extra costs in doing businesses attributed to manual processing of export documents in terms of administrative bureaucracy and transportation costs.
TCCIA has started training its staff in lake zone regions and Kigoma.
“The training will be conducted across the country in order to ensure our staffs had the capacity to issue electronic certificates of origin to business persons,” said Koyi during his official tour of southern highlands last Saturday whereby he held talks with TCCIA’s members including farmers and business persons on various issues related to trade and investment.
The TCCIA boss further expressed optimism that proposed initiative will provide unique innovative means of saving time and reducing costs in the issuance of CO to the business community in the country.
Moreover, the business community has welcomed this innovation and said it would help them in conducting their businesses with traceable records and at reduced costs.
Last year, deputy minister for Foreign Affairs and East African Cooperation, Dr Damas Ndumbaro urged business community to make use of the certificate of origin to grab markets within East Africa.
He said the EAC rules of origin helps differentiate between goods produced within the EAC region and those from outside to ensure favourable custom duties and tariffs for goods produced within the bloc.
According to him, partner states ratified the protocols to enhance businesses as well as boost development. He said it is the responsibility of Tanzanian farmers to meet the criteria set out in the Rules of Origin and acquire EAC Certificate of Origin to be able to purchase and sell products within the community.
According to him, most local manufacturers and farmers fail to sell their goods within the EAC due to some laxity in export processes.
He said identification of good produced in the EAC becomes easy when a product is wholly manufactured or obtained in one country.
