AS Tanzania just like any country struggles to promote trade between it with its neighbours, there are many benefits which also come with the business for the nationals as well as people from its frontiers.

This includes improving foreign relations and harmonious living along the borders, besides increasing the citizens’ access to goods and resources they may not be having, but available outside the country.

And as such trade booms, the citizens should be educated to be watchful against border jumpers who may exploit the free trade between the friendly nations to smuggle in counterfeit goods and also avoid paying statutory taxes.

The citizens should be enlightened that such dishonest traders smuggling in goods by evading Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA), Police, Tanzania Bureau of Standards (TBS) and other Customs Officials have ill intention and should be reported.

This is because their actions not only endanger local small scale entrepreneurs, but may also flood the market with goods, whose sources are not certified by State authority as being fit for human consumption.

The public especially those residing along the borders should be decanted to know that smuggled goods, which most of the time are restricted or prohibited, pose health risks to them and could be detrimental to the social well-being.

These people may capitalise on unguarded porous borders to smuggle into the country contraband goods, which have significant impact on the economy and lives of Tanzanians, but they can not exist in business without fellow Tanzanians giving them sanctuaries without realising that their activities are criminal offences, and all deserve to be condemned.

These people ought to know that smuggling under-cuts prices of the locally manufactured goods, and hence destroy the market for local products, and at the end of the tunnel lead to collapse of domestic industries.

Because these traders are not honest and deny their country its dues (revenue) they can go to the extent of participating in illegal trade, such as drug peddling, illegal weapons trade, exotic wildlife trade, illegal immigration or illegal emigration and above all these people have stopped to be patriotic as a result of money lust. 

Source: Daily News

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of TradeMark Africa.