A Tanzanian senior government official told parliament on Tuesday that 65 factories in the east African nation are currently producing about 3.65 million litres of sanitizers in a month as part of efforts to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.
Innocent Bashungwa, the Minister for Industry and Trade, said four factories owned by Tanzania Medicines and Medical Devices Authority are producing some 900,000 litres of sanitizers in a month and 61 small and middle-sized factories are producing 2,745,000 liters of sanitizers in a month.
Tabling his ministry’s budget estimates for the 2020/2021 financial year, Bashungwa told the House in the capital Dodoma that the factories are using a total of 2,548,951 litres of ethanol a month as raw materials used for making the sanitizers.
The minister said at the moment there are only two factories that are making face masks.
He said the two factories have a total installed production capacity of making 150,000 masks a day but currently one is making 30,000 masks a day and the other is producing 40,000 masks a day.
Bashungwa said the locally produced sanitizers and face masks have been certified by the country’s standards watchdog, the Tanzania Bureau of Standards.
Source: CGTN Africa
