By Ashery Mkama
Trademark East Africa (TMA) has provided 3.0m US dollars to the Tanzania Bureau of Standards (TBS) to strengthen standardisation and conformity assessment in Tanzania.
The funds whose agreement was signed in Dar es Salaam yesterday extends TMA’s support to TBS with the aim of increasing efficiency and effectiveness of the firm in the development and implementation of standards in Tanzania.
“This is an opportunity for Tanzania to catch up with other East African Community (EAC) Partner States for TMA support on standardisation and conformity assessment which we missed in the previous round, said TMA Tanzania Country Director, Dr Josephat Kweka.
“This means that the results achieved in other countries can be replicated in Tanzania,” he said. Dr Kweka was speaking in Dar es Salaam after signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Tanzania Bureau of Standards (TBS) Director General, Mr Joseph Masikitiko. Permanent Secretary (PS) in the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment, Prof Adolf Mkenda, was the guest of honour.
This new agreements is an extension of support that TMA has provided to TBS specifically procuring and delivering two categories of testing equipment which included mini-laboratory equipments and glassware, he said.
On his part, Mr Masikitiko said TBS still faced challenges such as limited service delivery mechanism, low awareness to stakeholders in participation to standardisation and quality assurance activities, inadequate updates and adoption of standards as well as absence of service value proposition, among others.
Over the years TBS has worked to address most of the faced challenges through designing products and services that aim at improving quality of products and services, contributing to the development of a national quality policy framework, adopting current technologies for efficient service delivery and participating in standards harmonisation programmes in the East African Community (EAC).
However, to address these challenges, he said, TBS through TMA support is embarking on a progress of improving its service mechanisms to its stakeholders in Tanzania and enhance its capacity.
Prof Mkenda said the government’s desire is to see TBS continue to grow and improve its capacity to deliver quality services to its stakeholders and expected that the areas covered under this project will result in the reduced cost and time facilitation system in Tanzania.
He insisted that the project will not only increase capacity of TBS but also provide opportunity for SMEs to access and effectively use standards to increase their export capacity through enhanced market access to regional and international markets.
Source: All Africa

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