Mining Commission Inspections: What Licence Holders Must Produce

This page is the mining inspection operating file: what a holder keeps on site, how those records are tested against each other, and what an adverse note does to the right itself. It is not a licence application guide and not a substitute for the mine’s own competent persons.

• Royalty, valuation and the export gate: royalties and export controls
• Supplier equity and procurement returns: mining local content
• Trading rather than digging: dealership licence classes
• What the mineral itself changes: gold, copper, nickel and gems

As at 14 September 2026. Confirm the inspection checklist, royalty schedule and reporting templates in force with the Mining Commission on tumemadini.go.tz; this file rests on the Mining Act Cap. 123 and the regulations made under it.

Two different things are called inspection

The word does double duty in the statute. One is the compliance visit: an authorised officer enters the licence area, walks the ground, and opens the records the right obliges you to keep. The other is mineral inspection: weighing, assay and valuation of a parcel at a government mineral warehouse, which carries a fee of 1% of gross value. Clearing every parcel through a warehouse settles nothing about the first.

Who holds the mandate, and where it stops

The Mining Commission: established when the Written Laws (Miscellaneous Amendments) Act No. 7 of 2017 rewrote Cap. 123 and absorbed the office of the Commissioner for Minerals: grants mineral rights, monitors operations, audits production and inspects. The Ministry of Minerals sets policy and does not run the visit. Safety belongs to the Chief Inspector of Mines, environmental approval to the National Environment Management Council, workplace registration to OSHA under the Occupational Safety and Health Act Cap. 297. None cures a finding made by another.

Minerals are a non-Union matter. Cap. 123 and the Commission run on the Mainland only. A quarry or mineral operation on Unguja or Pemba licenses under Zanzibar legislation, registers at BPRA rather than BRELA, and files non-Union taxes with ZRA, while income tax and customs at export stay with TRA.

What your licence class restricts before anyone measures it

A primary mining licence is reserved to citizens of Tanzania. A foreign-held company cannot hold one, and the arrangement officers look for is a citizen’s PML worked on foreign money under a management or offtake contract. That is a finding against both parties.

Where a special mining licence is in issue, the Government takes not less than 16% non-dilutable free carried interest in the holding company under Cap. 123. Suppliers sit under the Mining (Local Content) Regulations, 2018: a non-indigenous contractor works through a joint venture in which an indigenous Tanzanian company holds at least 20% equity participation. GN No. 487A of 2025 carries the wider list of activities reserved to citizens; read it against your real scope of work before the site file opens.

What gets opened first, by licence class

The papers a visit actually opens

Keep these at the mine, not in a Dar es Salaam office a day away.

• Licence certificate, cadastre extract, beacon coordinates as granted, and rent receipts to the current anniversary
• Production register: date, shift, tonnage treated, grade, weight recovered
• Sales register, export permits, and the assay certificate and royalty receipt behind each parcel
• Local content plan, quarterly returns, and a succession plan naming the Tanzanian who takes each expatriate post
• Social responsibility plan carrying the district or town council signature
• EIA certificate, monitoring results actually collected, closure and rehabilitation plan
• Mine manager and competent-person appointments, accident register, blasting and magazine records
• OSHA and Workers Compensation Fund registrations, contracts, permits for non-citizen staff
• TIN, fiscalised receipts under the Tax Administration Act Cap. 438, the bank account held in Tanzania

The order the desks take it in

1. Arrival and authority. Officers identify themselves and state the scope. Record names, time and that scope in your own book.
2. Right against ground. Certificate, cadastre extract and beacons are tested as one item. Workings outside the boundary are the hardest note to answer.
3. The workings. Pits or adits, waste dumps, plant, tailings facility, magazine, discharge point.
4. The records room. Production, sales, royalty, permits, employment, safety, in that sequence, each file tested against the first.
5. Reconciliation. Weight recovered, against assay certificates, against royalty and fee paid. Unexplained differences get their own paragraph.
6. Sampling. Material is taken, split, sealed and signed for. Insist on a counterpart; without one you cannot contest an assay months later.
7. The inspection note. Findings and directives are signed on site with a period to comply. Read it first; record disagreement on its face.
8. Follow-up. A compliance return, a re-inspection, or a show-cause letter that puts the right in issue rather than a sum of money.

Production, royalty and the export file have to agree

Royalty under Cap. 123 runs at 6% of gross value for metallic minerals (gold, copper, silver and the platinum group), and for diamonds, gemstones and uranium; coal, industrial minerals and building materials sit at 3%. The 1% inspection fee attaches to minerals presented for export. Both are settled at the warehouse before the permit issues. Finance Acts have moved mining rows in consecutive years, so confirm the live schedule for your own mineral class.

Since the Finance Act 2024, holders and dealers set aside not less than 20% of gold produced or traded for sale to the Bank of Tanzania. The sale note evidencing that disposal forms part of the same reconciliation; an intention to comply is not evidence of it.

Illustrative arithmetic, not a quotation. A medium-scale licence recovers 12.0 kg of gold in a month. Take TZS 200,000,000 per kilogram purely to make the working visible: the warehouse applies its own assay and reference price. Gross value is TZS 2,400,000,000. Royalty at 6% is TZS 144,000,000 and the fee at 1% is TZS 24,000,000, so TZS 168,000,000 reaches the Commission before any permit issues. The set-aside at 20% is 2.4 kg. Service levy to the council at 0.3% of turnover under the Local Government Finance Act Cap. 290 adds TZS 7,200,000.

Suppose the register shows 12.0 kg while the month’s parcels weighed 11.4 kg on arrival. If plant lock-up explains 0.1 kg, the remaining 0.5 kg is TZS 100,000,000 standing outside the file. TZS 6,000,000 of royalty and TZS 1,000,000 of fee are the small part; the paragraph about where the metal went is the expensive part.

Local content and social spending are read as documents

The 2018 local content instrument asks for a plan and periodic returns covering employment and training, procurement from Tanzanian suppliers, banking through a bank established here, insurance placed by a broker registered with TIRA, and legal services taken from a firm in Tanzania. Each fails identically: filed at grant, contradicted by the invoices next door. Procurement detail belongs on the local content page.

Cap. 123 separately requires a corporate social responsibility plan agreed with the local government authority in whose area the mine sits, submitted annually. A dispensary built without that agreement is charity, not compliance.

Safety and environment stop a pit faster than tax does

The Mining (Safety, Occupational Health and Environmental Protection) Regulations, 2010 carry the appointments: a mine manager in post, a competent person against each statutory duty, an accident register, immediate notification of a serious accident, ventilation records underground, and magazine records wherever explosives are held. A prohibition order takes effect the hour it is written.

Environment runs beside it: the EIA certificate issued under the Environmental Management Act Cap. 191, the monitoring results, and the rehabilitation commitment with whatever security the approval attached. Workers Compensation Fund contributions at 0.5% of gross monthly earnings for a private employer are read off the same payroll.

Where this file stalls

• Beacons shifted or missing, so ground and cadastre no longer describe one block
• A production register completed in a single hand, in a single ink, covering four months
• Royalty paid on warehouse weights while the register carries a larger recovery
• Rent lapsed, the default notice unopened at an address nobody checks
• Magazine register unsigned for weeks with explosives on hand and blasting under way
• Samples removed at the last visit with no counterpart kept and no receipt signed
• An inspection note signed unread, then disputed by letter weeks later

What has moved

Act No. 7 of 2017 remains the hinge: it created the Commission, introduced the free carried interest in special mining licence holders, and brought in the fee on exported minerals.

The Finance Act 2024 added the gold set-aside. The Finance Act 2025 amended Cap. 123 again. Read the amending text rather than a practitioner summary: inspection sheets are revised from the statute.

Mandate-holders this file does not replace

The Commission owns the mineral right, the inspection, the royalty assessment and the export permit. NEMC owns environmental approval, OSHA the workplace, the Workers Compensation Fund injury cover. TRA owns corporate income tax at 30% under the Income Tax Act Cap. 332, provisional instalments falling on the last day of the third, sixth, ninth and twelfth months, and customs at export. TIRA owns the insurer and broker. The council owns the service levy. BRELA owns the company register and beneficial ownership particulars. Immigration and the Labour Commissioner own permits. The Bank of Tanzania owns the gold purchase.

Zatra prepares, structures and coordinates the pack that meets these desks. It does not issue licences, sign assays, certify a mine plan or practise law; the decision rests with the mandate-holder.

What to confirm before you act

• The royalty and fee schedule in force for your exact mineral class, from the Commission
• Granted coordinates against the beacons standing today, measured before someone else does
• When the next rent falls due, and the address receiving the reminder
• Whether the 2025 amendments touched your licence class, reporting or fees
• The local content reporting template for this quarter, and the day it is due
• Whether the social responsibility plan carries a council signature this year
• Counterparts and receipts for every sample taken at the previous visit