MANUFACTURERS CALL FOR REDUCTION IN TAXES

In a move to enhance the competitiveness of local manufacturing and value addition, the Confederation of Tanzania Industries (CTI) has advised the government to review some duties and levies that were not addressed in the Finance minister’s general budget.

“In order to enhance competitiveness of local manufacturing and value addition in the country, there are still outstanding issues that needed to be addressed…issues like excise duty, import duty and Vat,” CTI Council member Stephen Kilindo said in Dar es Salaam.

On import duties, manufacturers propose the introduction of 20 percent on secondhand clothes, 10 percent increase on cement, and duty remission of spare parts used as inputs to manufacture trailers and tankers. Removal of 10 percent duty on starch, removal of duty of 10 percent on industrial chemicals and remove tax on formulated supplementary foods for infants.

In excise duty, manufacturers call for the reduction of excise duty on ready-made drink products to the same level with excise duty on beer, introduction of excise duty of 50 percent above the current duty on imported finished goods with alcohol content above 20 percent, removal of excise duty on carbonated soft drinks and drinking water, reduction of excise duty on petroleum jelly from 10 percent to 5 percent and the imposition of excise duty of 50 percent of older than five-year used trailers and tankers.

Others are the introduction of 50 percent excise duty on imported kanga, kitenge, kikoi and printed fabrics of cotton and synthetic materials and 20 percent on both new and used imported plastic or synthetic shoes and slippers and 20 percent excise duty of dry cell batteries.

They also call for the removal of tax on malt and maintain an application at zero for common external tariffs on imported wheat grains.

CTI also calls for the exemption of Vat of 18 percent raw packaging materials and 9.9 percent on pharmaceutical raw materials and continued pushing for reduction of Skills and Development Levy progressively from 5 percent to between 1 - 2 percent.