How ETS, Fuel Marking and Data-Driven Tools Transformed Tanzania’s Revenue Assurance Landscape in 2025
Tanzania’s revenue performance in 2025 continues to reflect a clear strategic shift: expanding the tax base while aggressively protecting and optimising existing revenue streams through digital systems.
In the first quarter of the 2025/2026 financial year, the Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA) collected TZS 8.97 trillion, surpassing its quarterly target by more than 6 percent and recording a 15 percent year-on-year increase compared to the same period in 2024. At the centre of this achievement is the growing role of technology-led solutions such as Electronic Tax Stamps (ETS) and the Fuel Marking Programme, which are redefining how revenue assurance is delivered.
This progress underscores a powerful reality: when tax systems become smarter, the national purse becomes stronger.
Turning Tax Systems into Intelligence Systems
The Electronic Tax Stamps (ETS) system has evolved beyond a compliance requirement to become a real-time intelligence engine. By replacing traditional paper stamps with secure, traceable digital tax stamps, regulators can now track excisable goods seamlessly from the factory floor to retail shelves.
During the 2024/2025 financial year, TRA collected TZS 32.26 trillion, achieving 103 percent of its target and marking a 16.7 percent increase from the previous year. TRA publicly credited technology-enhanced compliance mechanisms—particularly ETS—for strengthening the integrity of excise tax collection.
The impact has been especially notable in excise duty and VAT collections on domestic excisable products, which reached record levels in 2024/2025. Since TRA announced the ETS programme in 2016, excise duty revenues on marked products have increased by 94.4 percent, highlighting the long-term value of digital enforcement.
Safeguarding Fuel Integrity: Protecting Revenue and Transparency
Fuel marking remains a cornerstone of protecting one of Tanzania’s most sensitive revenue streams—the petroleum sector. The system safeguards against fuel adulteration, illicit trade, and tax leakages, all while promoting consumer confidence.
According to EWURA reports, compliance rates now exceed 96 percent, with billions of litres of fuel tested and validated using invisible forensic markers. These markers enable instant verification of fuel authenticity and dilution detection, ensuring that both government revenues and consumers are protected.
Mobile laboratories further strengthen enforcement by providing on-site verification in under five minutes, transmitting real-time results to central systems for swift, data-driven action. Beyond fraud detection, these tests pre-screen critical fuel quality indicators such as sulphur content, metals, and trace elements—helping protect engines, reduce emissions, and safeguard industrial investments.
Actionable Intelligence: The Backbone of Digital Transformation
What truly differentiates ETS and fuel marking is not the stamp or marker itself, but the data they generate. Because the marking process is secure, the data is reliable, forming a national intelligence network capable of identifying irregularities across the supply chain.
This intelligence highlights:
- Depots where marker profiles do not align with delivery volumes
- Districts whose excise patterns do not reflect legitimate trade activity
- Supply chains where products disappear between production and retail
- Zones where counterfeit or fake tax stamps are being used
In 2025, TRA intensified data-led inspections for excisable goods such as alcohol and tobacco. Rather than broad, resource-intensive field sweeps, enforcement teams focused on high-risk actors, improving recovery rates while reducing operational costs.
Real Wins from the Field
Several tangible outcomes demonstrate the effectiveness of Tanzania’s digital revenue tools:
- The Smart Digital Activation System revolutionised manufacturer reporting by automating serial uploads and significantly reducing ETS declaration errors.
- Fuel marker failures triggered targeted re-inspections, with EWURA sanctioning non-compliant fuel stations and rapidly restoring consumer trust.
- A noticeable reduction in counterfeit excisable goods helped protect legitimate manufacturers and brand integrity.
- AI-powered Digital Market Intelligence strengthened TRA’s ability to anticipate compliance risks, optimise enforcement deployment, and improve audit targeting.
- The Hakiki App once again empowered consumers to verify the authenticity of excisable goods, enhancing public awareness and promoting safer purchasing decisions.
Each of these outcomes reinforces one principle: digital systems create evidence, and evidence enables enforcement.
A Fairer Marketplace, a Stronger State
By tightening compliance and closing loopholes, digital revenue systems protect honest businesses, ensure fair pricing within the formal economy, and strengthen public trust in regulated goods. Most importantly, they help secure sustainable funding for national priorities—health, education, infrastructure, and broader social and economic development.
The Bottom Line
The digital transformation of revenue assurance is no longer a future ambition—it is Tanzania’s current advantage. ETS, fuel marking, and data-driven enforcement have demonstrated that when technology, transparency, and intelligence work together, revenues grow, illicit trade declines, and national systems become more resilient.
2025 delivered a powerful message:
Digital tools do not merely monitor revenue—they unlock it.
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