East African Business Week

NAMANGA, TANZANIA - Juliet Mweshimiwa, a Tanzania business woman went to Kampala, Uganda to purchase Bitenge and other types of clothes for women and children to sell in Moshi, Tanzania.
These items are not made in any of the five partner states of the East African Community (EAC) but originate from DR Congo and China.
The next time she went to Kampala she purchased items made in Uganda and Kenya and loaded them on to a bus to Moshi.
In both incidences, Juliet was found not to have got an invoice and neither did she have a certificate of origin for the each of the products.
She was asked to pay import duty and value added tax at point of entry to Tanzania both of which taxes depleted her profits she had expected to get out of sales.
"Leo mambo emenuka (Things are tight today)', she exclaimed as she entered the bus to proceed to Moshi after the Namanga border post checking and payment of taxes.
What this lady and many other small traders do not know is that the coming into force of the Customs Union eliminated import duty on products made in any one of the partner states.
So you can buy any of the products made in the five states and sell in any of them without paying import duty but you are supposed to get a certificate of origin of the products you have purchased to show that they originate from EAC partner states.
"A trader purchasing goods made in East Africa should get a certificate of origin from either the wholesaler or the manufacturer or the manufacturer's agent but in most cases these traders don't know about this and they don't come with the documents," said the Officer in Charge of Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA) Namanga station Priscus Munguasifwe.
"So such a trader has to pay all import duty on goods even if they are from one of the EAC partner states and value added tax, goods that must have documents are those worth $500 and above but those with less than that value can be easily assessed and taxes paid," he explained.
He added that traders importing in large volumes experience delays at Namanga because they don't do pre-arrival declaration of the goods imported.
"If one does pre-arrival declaration, it takes a few hours to clear the goods and they continue," he said.