Some of these policies were weak and some strong but the main problem, as so often pointed out by academicians, has been inadequate implementation to achieve the desired results.
"The results in terms of industrial development have failed to keep pace with the rhetoric," says John Page from the Brookings Institution.
And so goes the adage; "Policies are crafted in Tanzania, improved in Uganda and implemented in Kenya."
The current industrial policy direction points to deepening the private sector-led industrial growth as a way of transforming the economy from its heavy reliance on agriculture.
Vision 2025 aims at propelling Tanzania from a least developed country to a middle income country with a high level of human development and whose economy is diversified and semi-industrialised.
“This implies priority on science and technology and innovations to raise productivity in agriculture with priority to value addition by moving up the value chain in agriculture and promoting linkages with other sectors," reads a policy analysis report from Repoa.
According to experts the Vision 2025 marks an important milestone in Tanzania's industrial policy-making by emphasising the desire and wish to move once and for all from an agricultural economy to a semi-industrialised one.
The mistake that Tanzanian policy makers made, however, and which became the biggest impediment to the implementation of the Vision was the failure to put in place a framework for its implementation at the inception stage, according to the Tanzania Industrial Competitiveness Report 2012.
The Sustainable Industrial Development Policy 2020, on the other hand, seeks to facilitate shifting the economy's engine of growth from the public to the private sector.
The Industrial Policy was created in 1996 after a decade of adopting the Structural Adjustments Programmes imposed by the multilateral institutions on Tanzania and which had dealt blows to Tanzania's economy and led to a slump in industrial growth.
The idea of creating the Industrial Policy "was to consolidate, in the short run, the existing national capabilities in the industrial sector, and to build up new capacities in activities with competitive advantages for export markets in the medium term," reads part of the report of the Industrial Competitiveness report.
The Industrial Policy would guide the promotion of the private sector to take the lead in industrialisation while the government would be responsible for putting in place a conducive policy and regulatory environment and the requisite infrastructure.
"The government would only invest directly in industrial ventures which are strategic and of critical national economic importance such as iron and steel industry," reads a policy analysis document from Repoa.
The major exhibition of industrial products in Dar es Salaam on Wednesday, this week should measure the performance of the industrial sector under the fifth-phase government.
We expect that the industrial exhibition would give a broad picture on performance of the industrial sector for the past year since the fifth phase government came to power.
It is on record that so far more than 3,800 industries have been built within a period of one year, Tanzanians should therefore prefer to use local products produced in the country rather than imported ones. At the same time calling for local producers to adhere to quality to meet demands of the local market and compete in international markets.
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