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Investors’ forum should show opportunities
2005-08-12 06:52:23
By Editor
The Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Co-operation, Jakaya Kikwete, was scheduled to open the Tanga Investors’ Forum in Tanga yesterday.
This is the fourth such forum to be held since 2001. The others were held in Moshi, Mtwara and Mwanza.
These forums have been facilitated by technical expertise from the Tanzania Investment Centre (TIC) and the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (Unido).
The objective of holding the forums is to identify investment opportunities in various sectors of the economy as part of efforts to revamp the economies of those regions and also to promote local and foreign investment in other parts of the country.
Dar es Salaam, Arusha and, to some extent, Mwanza have been the major beneficiaries of foreign investment except for investment that has gone to mining operations in the Lake Zone.
There are a lot of investment opportunities in other regions and these include cashewnut processing and fishing in Mtwara.
Kilimanjaro has a potential for horticulture, dairy farming hi-tech industries, food processing and rice farming under irrigation.
For a long time, Tanga was the leading producer of sisal and the sisal sector used to employ thousands of plantation workers in addition to having other forward and backward linkages that created income-generating opportunities.
These included production of sisal twines and ropes and sisal bags.
The purchasing power of the region led to the establishment of industries which produced goods of mass consumption such as soap and detergents, textiles and garments, plastic products and many others.
It thus came as no surprise when the collapse of the sisal industry in Tanga led to the closure of operations of other industries which depended on incomes earned by sisal workers.
The Tanga investment forum should be used to discuss ways to revamp the sisal industry and how to establish industries which will add value to sisal such as the production of pulp and paper, pharmaceuticals and generation of energy from sisal waste.
Bitter lessons have been learnt about the adverse effects of a region’s dependence on one crop such as sisal.
It is expected that this forum will explore ways of diversifying the economy of Tanga Region in order to revamp it and solve the chronic problem of unemployment.
Local and foreign investors should be given incentives to invest and TIC should consider establishing an investment centre in the region in order to chart out strategies to attract investors to the region.
Tanga regional authorities should look for proper incentives with a view to reviving other industries which have ceased to operate such as Steel Rolling Mills, Amboni Plastics and Tanga Fertilizer Company.
It is also important that local investors prepare project profiles to be presented to potential foreign investors in order to form joint ventures and make the region a destination for local and foreign investors.
There should be a committee of all stakeholders charged with making a follow-up of what will be decided in the forum and make investment promotion sustainable and not just a one-day event.
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