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| Tourists admire local products |
Dagan Mdemi and his brother own several acres of land that borders the
Mkomazi National Park in Same District, Kilimanjaro Region.
Standing in the middle of the land, not very far away, he can see the
expansive rugged Southern Pare Mountains opening as an extraordinary spectacle
to the skies.
I met Dagan on his land two years ago, while on my way to the park. We
were a group of five journalists.
His dream was to open an eco-friendly campsite to maintain the natural
landscape, to tap into the increasing number of tourists visiting the park and
the Pare Mountains from the Kisiwani village gateway.
He was highly optimistic, at long last, his family would be able to
enter into the tourism business and take advantage of the majestic and
beautiful scenery that Mother Nature bestowed upon the area where he was born
and brought up.
“We have the land. All we need is to make it clean, plant suitable
grasses for the camp areas, and make the place strikingly beautiful. We will
plant a fence and build amenities like a good kitchen, toilets and bathrooms.
This we can afford. We will be catering for budget travellers who carry their
own tents,” he said enthusiastically.
He spoke of lofty goals like collecting Pare artifacts and constructing
a museum later on. Therefore I was excited when I met him last
week in Dar es Salaam, and was eager to know how the Mdemi Camp Site was
doing.
Looking forlorn, he said it was a dream that had turned into ashes. “We
only had about 3 million Tanzanian shillings to start the business. When I
looked at the legal requirements needed to operate the business, and what it
would cost, we gave up,” he said, adding that the tourism licence alone was
going to eat up all his capital.
And before he could apply for the industry specific licence, he had to
fulfil other business formalization procedures including registering a limited
company at the Business Registration and Licensing Authority (BRELA), apply for
a taxpayer identification number (TIN), apply for a business licence from the
regional trade officer, among other requirements.
“One business consultant asked me to cough up seven million shillings
and he would help me to get all the paper work needed to get us going,” he
said, shaking his head. “There was no
way I was going to afford that”.
He still hopes one day, he will raise enough money to be able to fulfil
all the legal requirements. In the meantime, he has to earn a living. When he gets visitors, he takes them to
the mountains and on coming back, he has to look for accommodation in
established lodges in the area.
Some of the visitors do not mind setting up their tents at the compound
of his village home after a long tour. That way, he earns extra money. He is of
the opinion that it is very expensive and time consuming to fully maintain
small and medium business ventures, despite the many opportunities available
for entrepreneurship in the country.
He says along the way, the family managed to buy an old but
well-conditioned four-wheel drive vehicle, which sometimes they use to take
tourists to Mkomazi and the Pare Mountains.
“I enquired what it would also take for me to become a registered tour
operator and once more, it was a disappointment.”
According to the law, for Tanzanian owned companies to get the document
to become a tour operator, one has to have a limited liability firm, physical
address and a fleet of not less than five
vehicles fully insured.
For firms under foreign ownership, one has to own at least ten
vehicles. “The regulations somehow edges
out small enterprises in the tourism business or they are forced to operate
informally,” he lamented with a sigh.
To get the vital documents from Tanzania Tourism Licensing Board
(TTLB), companies must first of all fulfil all other conditions for operating a
business, including getting other licenses at municipal or village level.
The tourism licence fees are high from 1,000 to 5,000 US dollars for
various categories. No wonder Mdemi felt this excludes small and medium
enterprises that want to work in the tourism sector. There are many other
Mdemis around, small-holder business people who would like to be in tourism
business unfortunately, the regulatory mechanism locks them out.
On the other hand, the Hotel Association of Tanzania (HAT) has
commissioned a research that is evaluating economic and legal impacts of
tourism licensing that will culminate into a policy brief.
Source: The Daily News,http://www.dailynews.co.tz, reported by Beda Msimbe of HabariLeo
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