JUDICIARY EXCELLS IN WORLD DOING BUSINES RANKING

By Nurdin Ndimbe

The World Bank has just released a World doing Business report where Judiciary has attained high ranking on enhancing business environment in doing business for 2016.Tanzania is among the 189 World economies that are evaluated by the World Bank on the easiness and conduciveness of their business regulatory system necessary for investment attraction.

Presenting a paper on Doing Business Report 2016 in Dar Es Salaam recently, the Court Administrator of High Court -Commercial Division, Mr Willy Machumu said that, the trend for doing business and service within the Judiciary has significantly improved better than before. According to reports released by the World recently, Tanzania has improved in service delivery in recent years.

The World doing Business report is a series of cumulative report which presents quantitative indicators on business regulations which can be compared within 189 economies of the World. The World Doing Business Report broad objectives are to inform various policy makers to improve quality of rules and regulation which aims on improving private Sector economic understanding.

“It depicts how easy or difficulty for local entrepreneur to open and run small to medium sized business when complying with relevant regulations, in short it is matter of measuring regulatory quality and efficiency in a given country how conducive is the country for business grounds and investment attractions” he said.

2016 Doing business report reveals that, Tanzania having population of 50,757.459 and GNI per CAPITAL equivalent of USD 930 has ranked 6th among 29 low income countries in Easy Doing Business and among the 47 of Sub Saharan has ranked number 15th it reads the report.

Cumulatively, the doing business report represents the result of two aggregate measures namely the Distance Frontier Score (DFT) and the easy of doing business Ranking (DB) which Tanzania is ranked 79.58 far behind Newsland as the best performer in the World. In the context of 10 track changes in the business, Judiciary of Tanzania is directly subjected on the issues of Enforcing Contracts and Resolving Insolvency.

In this category the broad areas for contract Enforcement lies on measuring time required to enforce a contract through the Court and accessed in different timeline such as time to file and serve the case, time of trial and time to obtain the judgment, time to enforce the Judgment, Court fees, Attorneys’ fees, and Enforcement fees and the last is the Quality of Judicial Process Index like Court Structures, Case Management, Court automation.

The Judiciary has recorded significant improvement and efficiency in areas Contract Enforcements compared to its peers in East Africa. “In all, Tanzania excelled globally in the 64th position compared to other economies such as Singapore as best performer, this is serious achievement in World ranking,” he insisted.

It is believed that, Tanzania takes 515 days to resolve Commercial dispute compared to Singapore which takes only 150 days. In the regional groupings Tanzania is the first in the East African region and 3rd to Sub Saharan Countries respectively. ‘’ We are far better in the region, what we need is frequently updated data and shared with our stakeholders including the World Bank ‘’. He emphasized.

The Five year’s Judicial Strategic Plan gives direction for improvement of Judicial Service through Citizen Centric Judicial Modernization and Justice Delivery Project aiming at improving the efficiency and transparency of access to justice services sponsored by the World Bank.

The project will make Judiciary enhancing institutional transformational results including informal traders, small business, large commercial enterprises and banks. It will make Judiciary more accessible by introducing mobile Courts and Alternative Dispute Resolutions; will empower vulnerable groups like children and women.

Furthermore e-justice will reduce cost, make service more efficient, transparent, strengthening inspection and performance systems along with introduction of e- complaint for law and justice sector operations will help the government on war against corruption.

The 140 billion Tshs project at last will improve people’s lives by enhancing the local business and investment environment, increasing transparency and reducing poverty especially in rural areas.

On the other hand, Judiciary of Tanzania commends the report but in the future there is room for improvement as the report has just sited with few courts like Kisutu, the questionnaires were compiled generally by local litigation lawyers instead of those regularly practicing in Commercial Court.