Tanzania Reduces Online Business Registration Time To 1 Hour

The Tanzanian Business Registration and Licensing Agency (BRELA), has recently launched an online platform to register companies that will reduce the time of issuing a business certification from three days to one hour.

The new system, created by BRELA’s staff using intern funds, is replacing the software Property Data Profiling (PDP) system developed by a local-private company at a total investment of TZS 800 million which was incorporated in 2010 and reduced the registration time from 90 to 3 days.

The new platform was officially launched by Tanzania’s President Jakaya Kikwete at the 9^th Tanzania National Business Council (TNBC) meeting held in Dar es Salaam on October 2^nd, 2015, where he congratulated BRELA for simplifying bureaucratic procedures for those starting a business.

To get the business certification, clients will need to access BRELA’s website to verify business’ name availability and execute the registration payment either online or by a mobile payment app, BRELA CEO Frank Kanyusi explained.

After the registration is completed BRELA’s staff will visit the client despite his or her location for the collection of the required documents, avoiding fill of forms, payment of fees and reducing the registration time considerably, he added.

TNBC Executive Committee Chairman Ombeni Sefue explained that the implementation of the new system is only the beginning of a new services’ series to be implemented online like registration of Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN).

Currently Tanzania ranks at the 124^th position among 189 countries in terms of starting a business with an average number of procedures of nine and a cost of 23.8% of the income per capita against an average of almost eight procedures and a cost of 56.2% of the income per capita for the Sub Saharan region, according to the World Bank’s Doing Business Project.