Nairobi — Tanzania will buy two mobile heavy-duty scanners to ease congestion at Dar es Salaam and Tanga ports. A new scanner costs about $5 million.

Harry Kitilya, Commissioner General of the Tanzania Revenue Authority, said last week that the government wants to speed up clearing of containers at the two ports.

He said TRA has already floated a tender for supply of scanners with higher capacity -- scanning up to 400 containers a day.

"This will improve the effectiveness of Customs administration at the two ports," he said.

He added that bidders had up to August this year to submit their interest, but TRA has extended the deadline.

Now ships with a capacity of 1,000 containers will be loaded and offloaded in two days, instead of five.

Recently, President Jakaya Kikwete said there was a need to buy more scanners to increase efficiency in the ports and enhance container traffic.

Meanwhile, Tiscan Tanzania Ltd, a member of the Cotecna Group, has launched online services for clearing and forwarding agents to ease congestion at Dar port.

This will be a boon to business people from neighbouring countries who use the port.

Tiscan deals with destination inspection and container X-ray scanning services for imports into Tanzania.

The company's deputy operations manager, Issa Jaye, said that agents and importers are now able to process their transactions from the comfort of their offices.

The Tanzania Revenue Authority partnered with Tiscan to ease Customs documentation procedures.

The services offered by Tiscan include commercial inspection, destination inspection, pre-shipment inspection, government services, risk management and container scanning.

Tiscan Tanzania Ltd is registered in the country and is a member of the Cotecna Group of Switzerland.

The earlier pre-shipment inspection system formed a long chain of bureaucracy.

Importers had to have their goods inspected before they were shipped to the country.

The programme ended on December 31, 2003.

The department then introduced the Destination Inspection Programme in July 2004.

Under this programme, Customs declaration is performed in Tanzania.

Selected consignments requiring physical verification are inspected upon arrival in the country.

X-ray scanning was initially done on imported containerised cargo. Scanners have been installed at KICD, JKNIA and other selected stations.

Excise duty is levied on seven items, each at its own rate.

The items are beer, soft drinks, cigarettes, salon and station wagon cars with engine capacity exceeding 2000cc, plastic shopping bags, wine, mineral water and spirits, and petroleum products.

The Department has gone through various stages of development. Before the East African Community collapsed in 1977, the Customs and Excise Department was under the management of the East African Community.

Thereafter, Customs operations were transferred to the Ministry of Finance (Treasury) in July 1977.

In 1982, the Customs and Excise Department was merged with the Sales Tax Department.

In 1996, the Customs and Excise Department was one of three revenue-collecting departments of the Tanzania Revenue Authority that were formed under the Tanzania Revenue Authority Act No 11 of 1995.

And starting January 1, 2005, the Customs and Excise Department started implementing EAC laws, namely the EAC Protocol and its Regulations, the EAC Customs Management Act and its Schedules, and the External and Internal Tariffs.