Africa-Press – Tanzania. COAST Region is set to collect a sum of 1.2bn/- this year after issuing 61,000 business Identity Cards (IDs) to petty traders, the Regional Commissioner, Eng Evarist Ndikilo has said.
The RC revealed this yesterday while addressing a regional meeting aimed at discussing challenges and the way forward for this year’s ID distribution exercise which has already commenced since March.
The meeting was attended by among others, District Commissioners, District Executive Directors (DEDs), officials from Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA) and Tanzania Chamber of Commerce Industries and Agriculture (TTCIA).
“As we are all aware, issuance of IDs to petty traders was introduced in our country in 2019 … our region performed very well by distributing a total of 59, 045 out of 60,000 IDs, which is equivalent to 98 per cent and which earned the region a total of 1, 180,900,000/-,” he said.
Eng Ndikilo pointed out that last year a total of 17, 607 identity cards out of 63,500, which is equal to 27 per cent were distributed, whereby a total of 337, 066, 000/- was collected.
“Last year the exercise faced numerous challenges, including poor response from petty traders,” he said. He called on the meeting participants to come up with strategies that will help ensure that majority of petty traders are issued with the business IDs.
Earlier, Regional Administrative Secretary (RAS), Dr Delphine Magere said that the issuance of business IDs aimed at creating an environment that will ensure petty traders are conducting their businesses without being disturbed by officials collecting taxes.
“We have worked on the shortfalls which occurred last year, and the system of issuing the IDs has been improved, and we expect that more petty traders will register for the IDs,” he said.
The Regional Chairperson for petty traders, Mr Philemon Maliga said that there was need for raising awareness to the petty traders about the importance of the IDs because most of them lack proper information about the service.
