Establishing A Business in Tanzania

under the guidance of Ministry of Industry and Trade. The Ministry did succeed to formulate the Sustainable Industry Development policy in 1997. This replaced the former basic industrial Policy. Unfortunately for a number of years trade had no coherent policy but was implemented under the control of various ministries and departments without proper coordination. However, need of having a coherent trade policy was conceived in 1999, under the trade policy formulation project as a one component of capacity building programme in the Ministry.

Implementation started in the 2000 with consultations and research. It ended up with drafting a policy document which after consensus building exercise and raising awareness among the public, the policy was adopted for implementation as a National Trade Policy in 2003.

The goal of Tanzania trade policy is to facilitate smooth integration into multilateral Trading Systems and rollback the gradual descent towards marginalisation. It is intended to ensure that liberalisation of economy offers meaningful, identifiable and measurable benefits.

The Ministry has two executive agencies under its umbrella namely the Business Registration and Licensing Agency (BRELA), which is responsible for Registration of companies both local and foreign, registration of Business names, Trade and service marks. The Agency is also responsible for grant of Patents, overseeing Copyright and Neighbouring rights administration in Tanzania as well as industrial licensing, while the Weights and Measures Agency (WMA) is responsible for fair trade transaction through certification of Weights and Measures.