Small and Medium Enterprise Development Policy 2002.

Based on the importance of this sector and its potential, the Small and Medium Enterprise Development Policy (SME) has been designed to revitalise the sector to enable it to contribute to the objective of the National Development Vision 2025. Furthermore, it aims at creating a mechanism to put in place an effective institutional framework for its implementation, coordination, monitoring and evaluation. Central to all these strategies is the ultimate objective of attaining rural industrialisation in line with the Poverty Reduction Strategy and the Vision 2025. The policy aims at revolutionising the SME sector to make it a vibrant and sustainable agent of stimulation of growth of the economy. In recognition of this, various interventions, including policies and programmes have been initiated to develop the sector. This policy focuses at encouraging women and other disadvantaged groups’ participation in SME activities through the following strategies: i. Facilitate SME service providers to design special programmes for women and disadvantaged groups. ii. Identify factors inhibiting women and other disadvantaged groups from going into business and design programmes which will address those factors.
The objective of the National Vision 2025 is to transform the predominantly agricultural economy to a semi-industrialised one. The SME sector has a significant role to contribute towards attaining this goal. It is on this basis that the Sustainable Industrial Development Policy identified specific strategies targeting at stimulating the SME sector to be able to play this crucial role. The vision of the SME Development Policy is to have a vibrant and dynamic SME sector that ensures effective utilisation of available resources to attain accelerated and sustainable growth. The Policy Statement is: The Government will facilitate acquisition and adaptation of technologies as well as enhance networking between R&D Institutions and SMEs in a bid to upgrade technologies so as to raise the productivity and competitiveness of the sector.
The mission of this Policy is to stimulate development and growth of SME activities through improved infrastructure, enhanced service provision and creation of conducive legal and institutional framework so as to achieve competitiveness. The overall objective of this policy is to foster job creation and income generation through promoting the creation of new SMEs and improving the performance and competitiveness of the existing ones to increase their participation and contribution to the Tanzanian economy.
The policy covers the following key areas: i. Reviewing and reconsidering public policies and regulations that discriminate against or hinder the start-up, survival, formalisation and growth of SMEs. ii. Enhancing the growth of the sector. III. Identifying and assigning clear roles of key actors. IV. Developing strategies that will facilitate provision of financial and nonfinancial services to SMEs. V. Developing and institutionalising public-private partnerships for SME sector development.