Gemstones and Diamonds vs Gold: Different Mining Commission Classes

This page is the dealer-class distinction file: gold is not gemstones, and diamonds are not a gold shop. It is not a royalty calculator, not a mining-licence grant, and not a courier “sample” manual.

• Gold export compliance: legal gold export
• Overlaps on ground: cadastre priority
• Dealer licence walkthrough: mineral dealer licence
• STAMICO versus private right: entry-route file

As at 10 September 2026. Confirm tumemadini.go.tz. If the live class list uses different names than this paragraph, the live list wins.

One Commission, several shops

A mining licence is a right over ground. A dealer licence is a right to trade specified minerals. Mixing them is how a pit operator “helps a friend sell stones” and funds an inspection. The 2024 Investor’s Guide is blunt on who may mine gemstones and who may trade: foreigners may not hold a Primary Mining Licence; gemstone exploration and mining are reserved to Tanzanians, with ministerial room for a 50/50 joint project where skill, technology or capital requires it; a mineral dealer’s licence requires Tanzanians to hold not less than 25 per cent of the licensed company, with 75 per cent the foreign maximum. Confirm the gemstone and joint-project figures live; they follow the 2024 guide. The dealer’s shareholding condition is a standing requirement of the licence.

A gold dealer or gold-export pack does not authorise a tanzanite, ruby or diamond counter. A gemstone dealer class does not authorise gold doré. Diamonds have historically sat in a tighter overlay than coloured stones because of Kimberley Process certification. Confirm the live diamond class. Do not relabel diamonds as “jewellery findings.”

TRA sits beside the counter: royalty is not frozen here

The Commission publishes a royalties and inspection-fees gateway. Archived tables are not invoices. Destination KYC in Dubai, Antwerp or Jaipur is a bank and buyer file, not a Commission exemption. Cash notes across a counter without an invoice is an AML and TRA conversation, not a cultural practice this page will romanticise.

Sequence

1. Name the mineral you will actually buy, hold and sell: gold, coloured gemstone, diamond, or a mix that needs more than one class.
2. Open the live Commission class list for that mineral. Print it.
3. Form the person who will be the dealer of record. Screen GN 487A only where the activity is actually reserved; dealing minerals is not automatically reserved, and this page will not invent that it is.
4. Take the Commission class before you take stock on credit from a pit.
5. Build the TRA and bank pack that will later support export or domestic sale. The invoice must name the mineral as the class names it.
6. Do not move “samples” as if a courier bag were an export permit. Customs at JNIA will not accept “I have a shop in Arusha.”

Worked path: the Arusha counter that already has gold papers

A licensed gold dealer adds tanzanite trays because tourists ask. The Commission class on the wall is gold. The stones are a second class. A raid does not care that the gold file was clean. Add the live gemstone class, or do not put the trays out.

The inverse stall: a gemstone dealer starts buying doré “for a friend in Dubai.” That is the gold-export file, with royalty and export control. A gemstone licence is not a smelter ticket. Processing, cutting and dealing are different authorisations even when they share a building. Confirm the class for each activity you actually do.

Failure modes

• One licence treated as all minerals
• Sample kits used as export
• Dealer class treated as a mining licence
• Royalty guessed from a WhatsApp
• Zanzibar stones modelled on a Mainland class
• “Mixed stones” or “jewellery findings” on the invoice

Keep a register the inspector can read: date, mineral, weight, source person, destination person, invoice number, Commission class used. “A man from Mererani” is not a source.

What the 2024 guide actually reserved, and what it did not

The Ministry’s 2024 minerals guide is the document most data rooms still paste. Read it as a 2024 orientation, not as a 10 September 2026 Gazette. It reserves gemstone exploration and mining to Tanzanians, with ministerial room for a 50/50 joint project. It does not say a foreign-owned company may “just deal instead.” Dealing is a different class with its own 25 per cent Tanzanian-shareholding test on a trading joint venture. Confirm both tests live. A dealing shop is not a workaround for a pit you cannot hold, and a pit is not a workaround for a shop you have not licensed.

Gold mining by a foreign-owned vehicle is a mineral-right file (prospecting, mining licence or special mining licence), plus the 16 per cent non-dilutable free-carried state interest on an ML or SML. That arithmetic lives on the mining-licence and STAMICO pages. Do not paste it onto a tanzanite counter and do not paste a tanzanite counter onto an ML.

Kimberley Process is a packing file, not a slogan

Tanzania participates in the Kimberley Process. Rough diamonds moving across a border need the live KP certificate the diamond desk issues. A gemstone dealer class, a gold-export pack, and a courier bag are not that certificate. If you do not handle rough diamonds, do not advertise that you do. If you do, print the live KP procedure the week you book the flight. This page publishes no carat threshold and no KP fee.