$10m scanners to ease congestion at Dar port

Tanzania will buy two mobile heavy-duty scanners to ease congestion at Dar es Salaam and Tanga ports. A new scanner costs about $5 million.  

Harry Kitilya, Commissioner General of the Tanzania Revenue Authority, said last week that the government wants to speed up clearing of containers at the two ports.

He said TRA has already floated a tender for supply of scanners with higher capacity — scanning up to 400 containers a day.

“This will improve the effectiveness of Customs administration at the two ports,” he said.

He added that bidders had up to August this year to submit their interest, but TRA has extended the deadline.

Now ships with a capacity of 1,000 containers will be loaded and offloaded in two days, instead of five.

Recently, President Jakaya Kikwete said there was a need to buy more scanners to increase efficiency in the ports and enhance container traffic.  

Meanwhile, Tiscan Tanzania Ltd, a member of the Cotecna Group, has launched online services for clearing and forwarding agents to ease congestion at Dar port.  

This will be a boon to business people from neighbouring countries who use the port.

Tiscan deals with destination inspection and container X-ray scanning services for imports into Tanzania.

The company’s deputy operations manager, Issa Jaye, said that agents and importers are now able to process their transactions from the comfort of their offices. 

The Tanzania Revenue Authority partnered with Tiscan to ease Customs documentation procedures.  

The services offered by Tiscan include commercial inspection, destination inspection, pre-shipment inspection, government services, risk management and container scanning.  

Tiscan Tanzania Ltd is registered in the country and is a member of the Cotecna Group of Switzerland.  

The earlier pre-shipment inspection system formed a long chain of bureaucracy.