Big Results Now: regulations and regulatory reform

In October 2012, the Government of Tanzania resolved to establish a strong and effective system to oversee, monitor and evaluate implementation of its development plans and programmes – called ‘Big Results Now’. This was launched in the first half of 2013 and is being implemented through the Transformation and Delivery Council (TDC), the President’s Delivery Bureau (PDB) and Ministerial Delivery Units (MDUs).

The PDB has a primary objective to facilitate, monitor and evaluate the delivery of BRN initiatives in six national key priority areas: agriculture, water, energy, education, transport and resources mobilisation.

In December 2013, at a meeting of the Tanzania National Business Council chaired by President Kikwete, it was agreed that the PDB should also focus on constraints imposed on business by the enabling environment and recommend proposals to address those constraints.

The GoT recognises the need to improve Tanzania’s business enabling environment as one contributor to economic growth and is therefore organising a four week “lab” on business environment reform commencing 24 February 2014. The objective of the lab is to proposals with timescales, costs and key performance indicators. A planning meeting has agreed six priority areas to be addressed by the lab: regulations and regulatory institutions; access to land and security of tenure; taxation; corruption; labour law and skills; and contract enforcement, law & order.

I will be participating in the work stream looking at regulations and regulatory institutions. The pre-lab meeting identified seven basic issues that will need to be considered:

• Simplification and automation of processes and procedures in doing business;
• Harmonisation, consolidation and automation regulatory institutions;
• Separation of revenue generation objective and functions from regulatory functions – agencies funded from government budget;
• Regulation making should be participatory and transparent and reflect the spirit of underlying laws;
• Business registration and regulatory licensing is streamlined, simplified and modernised;
• Lead times for enforcement of regulations introduced; and
• Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) including participatory processes and consultations should become part of a mandatory process for development and gazetting of regulations.

Each lab will involve around 20 senior people drawn private and public sectors. The hope is that the participants will not only develop workable and acceptable proposals but also that they will feel sufficiently committed to success that they will do whatever is necessary when they return to their day job.

I would welcome feedback from anyone who would like to influence the work of the lab and will be blogging over the course of the time that I am participating