Exporting Raw Cashew Nuts from Tanzania: Licenses, ATMIS and the Levy

Raw cashew nuts carry one of the more involved licensing paths of any Tanzanian export crop, and it’s worth walking through as a template — the same shape of process (sector license, dedicated tracking system, export levy) applies, with different specifics, to coffee, cotton, tobacco and timber.

The buying/processing license

Anyone buying or processing raw cashew nuts for export needs a license administered through the Agricultural Trade Management Information System (ATMIS), Tanzania’s digital licensing and tracking platform for agricultural trade. ATMIS registration is the gatekeeping step — without it, you cannot legally purchase raw cashew for export purposes, regardless of your customs documentation being otherwise in order.

The export levy

Raw cashew nut exports carry a levy of 15% of FOB (free-on-board) value, or USD 160 per tonne — whichever is higher. This is a meaningful cost input that needs to be built into export pricing from the start, not treated as an afterthought once a shipment is ready to move. A certificate of levy payment is required as part of the export documentation package; without it, TRA’s customs clearance process (see our agency-map piece) will not proceed.

Why the levy exists

Cashew levies of this kind are typically structured to encourage domestic processing over raw-bean export — the same underlying policy logic driving Tanzania’s cocoa value-addition push, covered on our sibling site Chocolate.tz. A processor who adds value domestically before export faces a different (generally lower) levy exposure than one exporting entirely raw product, which is the policy lever at work.

What this template tells you about other crops

Coffee, cotton, tobacco and timber each have their own sector-specific permit, export levy structure and regulatory body layered on top of the general TRA/TanTrade/TBS process described in our agency-map piece. We have not yet independently verified the specific levy rates and licensing bodies for each of those crops to the same standard as cashew above — treat this piece as the confirmed template, and check back as we add crop-specific deep dives for the others.