Economic performance of micro and small-scale enterprises (MSEs) in Tanzania

Small-scale processing and marketing activities of the agricultural produces are important themes in the development discourse of Tanzania and other countries in the world. In light of this situation, this book analyses the economic performance of the Tanzanian fruit and vegetable sector, covering sampled Micro and Small-Scale Enterprises (MSEs): The empirical research is based on a field study carried out in the Dar-es Salaam, Morogoro, Coast and Tanga regions of Tanzania. The descriptive and econometric analyses clearly show that factors which associated with collective working structure improve growth of studied fruit and vegetable processing enterprises. The results indicate that MSE’ operational capital, the number of owners, the number of staff, profit levels and annual product production levels, links to support organizations, plus access to basic market information and business improvement services, combined with the distance to input sources and marketplaces, as well as age of the manager-owners were found to be factors associated with the growth performance of the studied enterprises. It is also shown that multi-ownership governance for studied MSEs is an economically profitable venture in terms of returns generated from investments under the prevailing infrastructural and business conditions in Tanzania. Further, this study assessed the willingness of surveyed MSEs’ manager-owners to change a way of doing business from current individual mode of operation to cooperative working framework. Because the studied MSEs are currently not performing so well, the key proposal of this study is that the managers should cooperate in the fruit and vegetable sector and form small-scale food cooperatives.