DAR ES SALAAM — Tanzania's poultry industry is losing the value of tax exemptions it is legally entitled to, not because the reliefs have been withdrawn, but because they are applied differently from one consignment to the next.
The Tanzania Poultry Industry Association has identified the matter as a priority for 2027 and is preparing a submission to Government.
The disputes are narrow and technical. Premixes and supplements used in feed manufacture have been classified under HS 2309.90 rather than HS 2309.9010. Poultry keeping machinery provided for under HS 8436 has been reassessed under headings determined by the material of manufacture, such as Chapter 73 for articles of iron, rather than by the function of the equipment. Poultry cages have attracted different treatment depending on whether automatic systems are fitted. Disinfectants used in farm biosecurity have received varying classification.
In each case the question is not whether an exemption exists in law. It is which of two available answers will be given, and how long it will take.
The cost is in the delay, not the rate
Consignments held while a determination is awaited accrue storage and demurrage throughout. Those charges appear in no tariff schedule and are recoverable from no one.
The larger effect is on investment. A producer who cannot forecast the landed cost of a consignment cannot price the product that comes out of it, and cannot present that cost in a loan application. Banks do not lend against an input cost that varies between shipments.
This matters more now than it would have five years ago. Tanzania's poultry industry has passed the point at which growth comes from building more houses. It now depends on mechanisation and efficiency: automated feeding and watering, climate controlled housing, cage systems, improved feed conversion and precision formulation. These are imported capital goods, usually bought on credit, at the very moment the country has ceased to depend on imports for the product itself.
Uneven incidence
The burden does not fall evenly across the sector.
Firms holding investment incentives already pay a reduced effective rate, so a disputed assessment is often worth less than the cost of contesting it. Such firms settle and absorb the difference, and can hold stock while a determination is awaited.
Smaller and medium sized producers hold no equivalent relief, cannot leave consignments at the port, and have no staff dedicated to tariff classification. They pay the assessment in full.
The result is that a contested position is rarely tested and hardens into practice, while being paid by the producers least able to afford it. That runs against the National Poultry Development Strategy, which depends on exactly those producers expanding.
What is being sought
The Association has stated that it is not seeking new exemptions, concessions or waivers, and that every matter on its list concerns the application of relief already enacted or classification already provided for under the East African Community Common External Tariff.
Its central request is for written determinations issued as standing directives to clearing stations, so that a ruling attaches to a product rather than to a single consignment. It is also asking that the treatment of identical goods elsewhere in the East African Community be taken into account, the customs nomenclature being common to the Community.