The Confederation of Tanzania Industries (CTI) is still pushing for the review of some duties and levies that were not addressed in the Finance minister’s general budget read last week.
CTI Council member Stephen Kilindo told the press
yesterday in Dar es Salaam that, there were still outstanding issues
that needed to be addressed, and they included excise duty, import duty
and Vat.
“The implementation of these measures will enhance
the competitiveness of local manufacturing and value addition,” said Mr
Kilindo.
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 per cent
above the current duty on imported finished goods with alcohol content
above 20 per cent, removal of excise duty on carbonated soft drinks and
drinking water, reduction of excise duty on petroleum jelly from 10 per
cent to 5 pc and the imposition of excise duty of 50 per cent of older
than five-year used trailers and tankers.
Others are the introduction of 50 per cent excise
duty on imported kanga, kitenge, kikoi and printed fabrics of cotton and
synthetic materials and 20 per cent on both new and used imported
plastic or synthetic shoes and slippers and 20 per cent excise duty of
dry cell batteries.
On import duties, manufacturers propose the
introduction of 20 per cent on secondhand clothes, 10 per cent increase
on cement, duty remission of spare parts used as inputs to manufacture
trailers and tankers.removal of 10 per cent duty on starch, removal of
duty of 10 per cent on industrial chemicals and remove tax on formulated
supplementary foods for infants.
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 per
cent raw packaging materials and 9.9 per cent on pharmaceutical raw
materials and continued pushing for reduction of Skills and Development
Levy progressively from five per cent to between one and two per cent.
CTI executive director Christine Kilindu called on
the government to expand its tax bases. “We have done a survey in
villages and found that there are some industries which can be included
in the list of taxpayers,” she said. “Continuing reliance on narrow tax
base focusing on fuel, beverages and cigarettes could lead into
inflating prices and reduce sale volume which in turn reduces government
revenue.”
