TNBC Meetings

The Council has now formally been established following signing of the Presidential Circular No 1 of 2001 and publication of the Establishment Circular as Government Notice No 691 of 28th September 2001. The Council became operational in March 2002 when it held its first meeting as the supreme consultative body between the private and public sectors under the Chairmanship of the President of United Republic of Tanzania. The first meeting deliberated on three topics namely Tanzania Vision 2025, Tanzania Investors’ Road Map and Competitiveness of Tanzania in the Global Economy.

Investors’ Round Table (IRT)

In recognition of the role of foreign direct investments in economic growth, the Government in collaboration with the private sector, supported by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, is spearheading formation of a smaller consultative body bringing together selected prominent foreign and local chief executives (CEOs) objectively to debate on investing in Tanzania.

TNBC, on behalf of the government as well as the private sector, has come to an understanding with the World Bank and IMF to establish an Investors’ Round Table (IRT) as a special and elevated working committee-adding value to the existing consultative framework and reporting to the TNBC as the supreme body.

The IRT is an informal forum consisting of members from the Government, Tanzania private businessmen, TNBC Private sector representatives, representatives of foreign investors already established in Tanzania and a majority representing international business people currently not investing in Tanzania. Invited Guests also attend the sessions as observers. 72 prominent investors, 49 local and 24 international, have accepted an invitation by the President of United Republic of Tanzania to serve in the IRT. The President is chairing IRT meetings and already local and international investors have successfully held inaugural meetings. It has been agreed to hold more Local IRT meetings on sectoral basis and to hold International IRT meetings after every six months.

The local meeting resolved:-

• That Globalization should not gobble away national economies, thus the need to protect and build the national economy
• That there was need to cultivate strong entrepreneurial skills in Tanzania with the objective to enlarge the formal sector by gradually diminishing the informal sector
• That there was need to promote Tanzania as an attractive investment destination
• The first International IRT meeting acknowledged decisions of Local meeting and recommended formation of working groups to dwell extensively on investment promotion issues and report progress on:

   

• Image and Perception of Tanzania
• Tourism
• Human Capital Development
• Manufacturing and
• Agri-Business

The second meeting was held in June in Zanzibar and received progress reports on reforms made to address investment impediments and directed consolidation of Working Groups as follows:

• Tourism and Image (Branding Tanzania, Marketing Tanzania, Defining Tourism Product, Grading etc)
• Technology (rural telephony, ICT, rural infrastructure)
• Finance (Access to Capital, fiscal and monetary policy)
• Human Capital Development (Scholarship Fund, School Curriculum, Tanzanians in the Diaspora etc)
• Manufacturing and Agri-Business (Revive resource based industries for value addition)
• Agriculture ( commercial farming, mechanization, rural infrastructure)
• Special Advisory Group (advisory to President on a more regular basis)

• The need to strengthen the public and private sector dialogue in the effort to promote economic reforms and private sector led economy
• Requested IRT Members to put more time and efforts in the Working Group operations to make the discussions more focused. The international IRT Members should come up with case studies in order to make the IRT process a success
• Each IRT meeting in future should end up with division of tasks among the members. The Unilever case of branding exercise was cited as a good example and Coca Cola was willing to participate
• Proposed the establishment of Trade Issues Working Group with the objective of strengthening international trade and investment negotiation capacity

 

SMART Partnership Hub (SPH):

To create a broader consultative mechanism under the TNBC that incorporates small and informal sector players, SMART Partnership concept has been added to the TNBC. SMART Partnership is a world wide concept based on the general principle that any economy is an integral whole with the general infrastructure, business process and social responsibilities all supporting each other.

The partnership is driven by the truth that an individual’s struggle can only be successful if the nation as a whole is successful and prosperous. SMART Partnership is about creating limitless opportunities for generation of wealth, which is founded and shared on trust. SMART Partnership is based on the deliberate policy of cooperation with Government, the private sector, labour, academia, the media, civil society etc, aimed at transforming a country into a winning nation.

The genesis of SMART partnership is the Commonwealth Heads of States Conference held in Lankawi Malaysia where the concept was mooted to enable member states address global issues. Ever since, such countries as Malaysia, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Uganda have embraced the concept and the impact on their development process has been dramatic and impressive

Following the Global 2001 SMART Partnership International Dialogue held in August 2001 in Uganda, it was felt that a Tanzania hub was critically important and it has been recommended to make TNBC the national hub. The President is willing to chair the Tanzania hub and Tanzania intends to organize a SMART Partnership International Dialogue in the near future.

District SMART Partners would debate on development issues and feed Regional Chapters where regional teams would be created to attend the National Convention. It is intended to organize SMART Partnership conferences and events on a theme basis starting at district level up to a regional level ending with a national convention. At the national convention, key issues as discussed at regional level would be debated for final presentation to TNBC, the supreme consultative body in Tanzania.

Parallel with the process will be a vigorous membership development drive by TPSF targeting at mobilizing informal sector as well as SMEs into organised private sector constituencies at District level ready for participation in advocacy.

Like the IRT process, SPH working groups will be established on the basis of themes under consideration and would be tasked to coordinate the district debates, regional dialogue and presentation of focused papers to the national convention and eventually to TNBC. The TNBC secretariat will manage and coordinate the entire process under the direction of the TNBC Executive Committee, underscoring the need to strengthen the capacity of the secretariat and to establish effective and efficient communication network. Empowerment, globalization and conflict resolution issues are currently featured as key themes to start the dialogue.

The TNBC structure will therefore include SMART Partnership Hub (SPH) and Investors Round Table (IRT) as added features.

 

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EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE



 

SECTRETARIAT