India Got Serious About Selling State Assets. What Should Tanzania Learn Before Listing Its Own?

Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange Tower

India is the country whose transformation excites me the most. Our ties run deep and go back centuries, through dhow trade across the Indian Ocean, and today thousands of Tanzanians are of Indian descent. So it is no surprise that much of what I read on marketing, economics and industrialisation draws its lessons and examples from India.

This week that connection felt especially close. Two articles I came across, one in The Citizen and one in The Economist, describe almost the same policy in the two countries, at different stages.

Tanzania is preparing to list some of its state-owned firms on the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange (DSE). India has been on that road for more than three decades. I think Tanzania's move deserves praise. But it would be wise to study how the journey has gone for India before we take our first big steps.

Where Tanzania stands

According to The Citizen, the Office of the Treasury Registrar has assessed government-owned institutions and sorted them by how soon they could list: short, medium and long term. Tanzania Commercial Bank (TCB) is in the short-term group. Its preparations are advanced, with internal government procedures the main step left. In July, Treasury Registrar Nehemia Mchechu said four or five state firms could list during the 2026/27 financial year, subject to approvals.

The scale of what is at stake is large. The value of investments managed by the Treasury Registrar grew from Sh67.73 trillion in 2020/21 to Sh92.28 trillion in 2024/25, an increase of 37.7%. The office has also set itself a non-tax revenue target of Sh2 trillion for 2026/27, above the Sh1.79 trillion it was assigned.

Most encouraging is the change in thinking. The question is no longer only "What does the government own?" It is now "What return is the government getting from what it owns?"

What India has learned the hard way

India built a huge state sector after independence. Nehru wanted the state to control the "commanding heights" of the economy, and Indira Gandhi later nationalised most major banks. Many older Indians can tell you what this meant in practice. Under the state telephone monopoly, getting a phone line could take years, and a telephone repairman was treated almost like a VIP.

The 1991 crisis forced liberalisation, and private competition changed industries such as telecoms completely. But here is the first surprise. India opened its markets without leaving them as an owner. The number of central public sector enterprises actually rose, from 236 in 1991 to 291 today. Over the same period their share of output fell from around 11% of GDP in 2006 to just under 3%.

For years India also set ambitious targets for selling assets and then missed them. For 2025/26 it budgeted ₹47,000 crore and later revised the figure down to ₹33,837 crore.

This year looks different. The 2026/27 target is ₹80,000 crore, and by August the government had already raised about ₹62,124 crore, roughly 78% of the goal. The Economist's point, though, is about where that money came from. The biggest single deal was the sale of 6.5% of Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) for about ₹31,515 crore. That is a minority stake. The government still runs LIC.

So India has become good at selling shares and is still hesitant about giving up control. The real test is IDBI Bank, where a controlling stake is meant to pass to a private buyer. Finding someone willing to pay a fair price for control of a large state institution is far harder than selling shares on an exchange.

Five lessons for Tanzania

1. Be clear about the goal. Selling a minority stake, monetising an asset and privatising a company are three different things. Each brings different results for revenue, control and performance. The public, and investors, should know which one the government intends for each firm.

2. A listing alone does not change behaviour. If the government stays the controlling shareholder, management may still be politically appointed and face obligations that private competitors do not. This weakens the incentive to perform. If the goal is better companies and not just cash, listings must come with real governance reform: independent boards, timely disclosure and management accountable to all shareholders. The integration of the Public Institutions Management System (PIMS) with GePG, MUSE and ERMS is a good start on transparency.

3. Draw the strategic line publicly. Tanzania is selling down in some places and buying up in others. Its stake in Nyanzaga rose from 16% to 20%, and in ICCL Inflight Catering from 29% to 40%. That can be sensible. Every country has assets tied to security, energy or financial stability that it should keep. The hard question India still faces is which firms truly need state control and which are state-owned only because nobody has sold them yet. Tanzania should answer that question openly, early, and with clear criteria.

4. Let execution set the pace, not the announcement. India's history of missed targets damaged its credibility with investors. Four or five listings in a year is ambitious for a market the size of the DSE. One well-run TCB offering will do more for investor confidence than five rushed ones.

5. Treat the listing as a marketing job, because it is one. This is where my two worlds meet. A public offering is the government selling a story to ordinary Tanzanians, many of them first-time investors. India's own experience is a warning here: LIC's 2022 IPO, heavily promoted to policyholders, traded below its issue price for a long time after listing, and many small investors lost faith. If our first listings disappoint retail buyers, every listing after them gets harder. Price fairly, explain the business honestly, and make sure the first experience is a good one.

Bottom line

Tanzania is right to list state firms on the DSE, and it can move from talk to action faster than India did. But India's story shows that raising money from state assets and changing how those assets are run are two different achievements. India has mastered the first and is still struggling with the second. If Tanzania plans for both from the start, it will not just be selling shares. It will be building better companies and a deeper capital market for all Tanzanians.