By Tanzania’s government is preparing Tanzania Commercial Bank (TCB) for a listing on the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange (DSE), the first of several state-owned firms it plans to bring to the market, a senior treasury official said.
Lightness Mauki, acting Treasury Registrar, said public institutions had been assessed and sorted into short-, medium- and long-term categories based on their readiness for listing, with TCB placed in the short-term group.
Mauki said internal government procedures for the Tanzania Commercial Bank listing were being finalised before the process moves forward, though she did not give a specific date for a share sale or stock market debut.
The government owns about 98% of TCB, a commercial lender formerly known as TPB Bank Plc that traces its roots to a savings bank established under British colonial rule in 1925.
The Office of the Treasury Registrar, which oversees state investments, said the listing programme was designed to attract new investment, unlock value from public assets and strengthen transparency and accountability at state enterprises.
A listing would let individual and institutional investors buy stakes in selected public institutions for the first time, while subjecting those entities to stricter disclosure, governance and performance requirements, the office said.
The Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange listing plan forms part of a broader government effort to convert state investments into assets that generate stronger financial returns, rather than simply holding them, according to the Treasury Registrar’s office.
David Shambwe, director of non-commercial organisations at the office, said the shift was becoming more pressing as the value of government-held investments continues to expand. He said the focus was moving toward transforming those assets into productive investments capable of delivering measurable results.
Official figures cited by the office show the value of investments managed by the Treasury Registrar rose to 92.28 trillion Tanzanian shillings ($36.6 billion) in the 2024/25 financial year, up from 67.73 trillion shillings in 2020/21, an increase of about 38% over five years.
Non-tax revenue collected by the government also rose, reaching 1.37 trillion shillings in the 2025/26 financial year, up from 1.028 trillion shillings a year earlier, the office said.
Nehemiah Mchechu, an earlier Treasury Registrar, said in February that internal government processes for a wider round of listings had been completed and that a consultant had been engaged to determine which institutions were ready to list, how long each process would take and how best to carry it out.
Mchechu said at the time that several public institutions were expected to join the stock exchange from the start of the following financial year, a move he said would allow more Tanzanians to become shareholders in state-run entities while easing the government’s burden of funding them.
The government has periodically floated the idea of listing TCB before. Plans to list shares of the bank’s predecessor on the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange were considered decades ago but did not proceed, according to the bank’s corporate history.
The Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange, established in 1996, currently has fewer than 30 listed companies, including lenders CRDB Bank, NMB Bank, Dar es Salaam Community Bank (DCB) and Mkombozi Commercial Bank, as well as Tanzania Breweries and Tanzania Cigarette Company.
Regulators and exchange officials have said in the past that adding more state-owned firms to the bourse would deepen the market and widen the pool of shares available to retail investors, who currently have limited options for buying equities in Tanzania.
Banking sector listings on the DSE have had mixed results in the past. DCB listed via an initial public offering in 2008, while Mkombozi Commercial Bank listed in 2014.
The Treasury Registrar’s office did not immediately say which other institutions had been classified in the medium- and long-term listing categories, or provide a timeline for their potential listings.
Mauki’s comments were made at a meeting with editors from Tanzanian media outlets, organised by the Office of the Treasury Registrar ahead of an annual gathering of board chairpersons and chief executives of public institutions in 2026.
The government has not said whether the planned TCB share sale would take the form of a full initial public offering, a partial divestment of its stake, or another structure. It has also not disclosed a target size or valuation for any offering.
TCB reported after-tax net income of 10.7 billion shillings in the first quarter of 2024 and had total assets of about 1.37 trillion shillings as of 2023, according to the bank’s public filings.
