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Dodoma – The government has abolished 16 charges and removed 23 taxes payable to the Tanzania Food and Drugs Authority (TFDA) and the government chemist chief with the aim of attracting investment in the pharmaceutical industry.
The decision, announced yesterday in Parliament by the Minister of Health, Community Development, Gender, Seniors and Children, Ummy Mwalimu, also aims to ensure a reliable supply of essential drugs. The decision will come into effect on July 1, 2019.
Among other things, it will remove the cost of preserving domestic products, duplicate fees of certificates, inspection fees of local industries, inspection fees of new food stores, fees relating to export permits and inspection fees of small scale food industries.
The list also includes the evaluation fees for food advertisements, medical representation fees, inspection fees for veterinary drug stores, pharmaceutical product certificate fees and disposal certificates.
Others are permits for the costs of marketing psychotropic and narcotic drugs, medicines and cosmetics, health certificate fees, import fees for raw materials for medicines and cosmetics and license fees for change of labels.
The government has reduced the registration fees of locally produced medicines from $ 500 (about 1.2 billion shillings) to 1 million shillings, while that of processed foods made from cereals for children has been reduced to 1.5 million shillings, against 1.5 million shillings, Ms. Mwalimu told the Chamber yesterday.
"The initiatives are aimed at attracting more investors in the sector to ensure a reliable supply of medicines in our health facilities," she said, urging Parliament to support a total of of 99.7 billion shillings for the 2019/20 financial year.
Of this sum, 546.9 billion shillings are intended for development expenditure.
Data from the Ministry of Industry and Trade showed last year that Tanzania spent more than 800 billion shillings annually on imports of medicines and medical supplies.
National factories are able to satisfy only about 6% of the demand for medicines and medical equipment.
Ms. Mwalimu told Parliament yesterday that the Ministry, in collaboration with the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Tanzania Investment Center (TIC) and the Department of Drug Stores (MSD) had developed guidelines on investment opportunities in the pharmaceutical industries 2018.
"This is to simplify access to information about investments in the pharmaceutical industry," she said.
The goal, she added, was to encourage investors to set up pharmaceutical factories in line with the government's industrialization efforts.
"Until March 2019, the construction of eight drug manufacturing industries was at different stages," Ms. Mwalimu said.
These include Kairuki Pharmaceuticals, Biotech Labs, Vista Pharma, Afravet / Novel Biological and Biological Vaccines, Hester Biosciences Africa, Afrikana Pharmaceuticals, Alfa Pharmaceuticals and Pharm Access.
At the same time, the government plans to buy essential drugs worth 200 billion shillings over the next fiscal year.
He also plans to table the Universal Health Coverage Bill in Parliament in September to allow every Tanzanian to enroll in a health insurance system.
Peter Serukamba, chair of Parliament's Committee on Social Services and Community Development, called on the government to speed up the preparation of the bill to increase the number of people covered by health insurance, which is currently 33%. He also called for the employment of a greater number of community health workers to improve health services.
"The committee is aware that the country has about 13,000 unemployed community health workers." Rwanda has managed to reduce the number of children under five killed by the availability of health workers Community, "said Serukamba.
Tarime Urban, legislator (Chadema) on behalf of the opposition, Ms. Esther Matiko, urged the government to improve the business climate to attract health sector investors through public-private partnerships (PPPs).
It also urged the Government to issue work permits for the use of experts to reduce the problems related, inter alia, to outbreaks of communicable and non-communicable diseases.
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