The Tanzania Chamber of Commerce Industry and Agriculture
(TCCIA) unveiled the system today that allows it to issue the
Electronic Certificate of Origin (eCO). This service is expected to
benefit the business community and more specifically the
export community immensely.
This
technology based system is the first of its kind in East Africa and
will enable the exporters/ clearing and forwarding agents to process
Certificates of Origin electronically using their
computers, or mobile devices including tablets and smart phones. This
project has been supported by Trade Mark East Africa (TMEA).
Trade
facilitation calls for rationalization and reduction in the number of
documents needed for international trade and to introduce electronic
online processes. This will reduce the time it
takes to physically move between different offices collecting documents
and to obtain necessary approvals. Manual processing of export
documents adds to the cost of doing business due to the time taken to
comply with administrative bureaucracies.
Executive Director at TCCIA, Daniel Machemba, said
“The launch of the
electronic certificate of origin is a boost to Tanzanian businesses and
will spur export trade. The time and costs savings will encourage
businesses to seek other markets for their export. This is a new system,
a first of its kind in East
Africa, which shows that Tanzania private sector is ready to do
business. The private sector is an important partner to the government,
and by developing such systems that can spur trade, we feel we are
contributing to the expanded trade in Tanzania”
Electronic
processing of certificate of Origin is yet another achievement by the
chamber, contributing to its existing efforts to reduce red tapes and
other obstacles to trade, in order to improve
the trading environment in Tanzania and in the EAC region as a whole.
Specifically TCCIA has designed and is now managing another system of
reporting and monitoring NTBs which is also supported by TMEA and has
been a great success so far. Data available from
this system shows that concerns related to Certificates of Origin are
among the top five NTBs reported in Tanzania. Others include customs
procedures, administrative procedures at the borders and variable
levies.
The design of this system clearly illustrates
that the chamber is spot on, proactive and responsive in designing real
time solutions to problems and challenges in the market place.
Country Director at TMEA Tanzania, Paulina Elago, said
“Let us give credit to
TCCIA for their continued efforts to champion innovative ideas to
produce home grown, private sector led products, which are of first
class quality, to improve the trading environment and eventually reduce
cost of doing business.
This initiative is consistent with TMEA’s overall objectives and our
expected results of increasing intra-regional exports by 25% come 2016,
in addition to our efforts to promote the use of technology to bring
about efficiency and cost saving measure to trade.”
The
introduction of the eCO will lead to a significant reduction in the
long queues of exporters waiting to collect certificates at the
chamber’s offices and the number of times an exporter has
to visit the chamber as they will now complete the forms online in the
comfort of their offices.
This also reduces the time that is lost in
the traffic jam by the exporters who have to physically collect that one
form. Ultimately this will lead to only one
visit to the chamber to collect a final certificate, translating in a
saving of more than 50% of the time spent on processing documents.
The
system provides for a reliable way of processing the CoO and thanks to
technology authorized officers and signatories
will be able to approve submitted documents from anywhere and need not
be physically in the office.
This is important, considering that, as
export volumes continue to grow, with increased investment inflow in the
country, working online becomes a perfect
way to efficiently process large volumes of submitted documents
awaiting approval.
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