Tanzania’s Prime Minister Hon. Kassim Majaliwa has directed the merger of the Tanzanian Food and Drugs Authority (TFDA) and Tanzania Bureau of Standards (TBS) due to the similarity of the institutions’ functions.
According to a statement by the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) over the weekend the activities of the two entities were more or less the same. This followed the premier’s meeting with small traders in Dar es Salaam on Thursday 28th February where he directed the Minister for Industry and Trade and Minister for Health, Joseph Kakunda and Ummy Mwalimu respectively to meet and prepare a framework for joining the two entities. Upon holding those consultations, the two ministers are supposed to prepare a bill for a structure combining the two entities for tabling in the National Assembly.
The Prime Minister stated that merging the bodies would cut down bureaucracy that the public has always been complaining about, a situation that costs the nation billions of shillings in losses from uncollected revenues from businesses. The premier further raised concerns of how the two regulatory bodies spend a lot of time testing the quality of products, which causes immense inconvenience to business people denying the government large amounts of potential revenue.
Source: www.allafrica.com
