Tanzania Statutory late-payment interest
Tanzania Statutory late-payment interest: no single figure applies. The reason is set out below, cited to the governing instrument. Last checked against the official source on 10 Aug 2026.
Tanzania fixes no statutory interest on overdue money obligations; the only rate set by law is the 7% per annum court rate that attaches to a judgment debt once a court has given judgment.
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| Current value | structured — see the API |
|---|---|
| In force from | — |
| Official source | Civil Procedure Code (Cap 33) s 29: 'without prejudice to the power of the court to order interest to be paid up to date of judgment at such rates as it may deem reasonable, every judgment debt shall carry interest at the rate prescribed from the date of the delivery of the judgment until the same shall be satisfied'; Order XX rule 21(1): 'The rate of interest on every judgment debt from the date of delivery of the judgment until satisfaction shall be seven per centum per annum or such other rate, not exceeding twelve per centum per annum, as the parties may expressly agree in writing before or after the delivery of the judgment or as may be adjudged by consent' |
| Last verified | 2026-08-10 |
| Verification | primary — No verification limitation recorded — read from the official source cited. |
| Provenance | source fingerprint |
What this value means
REFUSAL — Tanzanian law gives a creditor no statutory interest rate on an unpaid invoice. Three regimes exist instead, none of them a general late-payment rate: (1) CONTRACT — whatever rate the parties agreed, subject to the court's power to refuse enforcement of a rate it finds harsh; (2) PRE-JUDGMENT INTEREST — pure court discretion under s 29 of the Civil Procedure Code, 'at such rates as it may deem reasonable', with no floor, ceiling or reference rate; (3) JUDGMENT DEBTS — a fixed 7% per annum court rate under Order XX rule 21(1), running from delivery of judgment until satisfaction. That 7% may be displaced only up to 12% per annum and only where the parties expressly agree in writing or consent to it; the Court of Appeal has struck down an award of 12% from the date of judgment as illegal because section 29 read with Order XX rule 21 fixes the allowable court rate at 7%. Interest on costs is capped separately at 7% (s 30(3)). The 7% therefore attaches through court process, not to the debt — serving it as a statutory late-payment rate would mislabel it. No civil/commercial split exists, and there is no reference-rate linkage to the Bank of Tanzania rate. TRAP: the rule is Order XX rule 21, not Order XXI rule 21 — Order XXI deals with execution of decrees, and the misplaced citation is common in filings. Retrieval note: tanzlii.org and the Attorney General's oagmis.oag.go.tz portal both block automated fetchers (Cloudflare interstitial; truncated PDF downloads); the principal 1966 text of the Code is retrievable in full elsewhere.
Get it programmatically
curl https://afriref.dev/v1/tz/statutory-interest
# $0.005 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History: curl https://afriref.dev/v1/tz/statutory-interest/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://afriref.dev/provenance/tz/statutory-interestOther Tanzania series: Bank of Tanzania central bank rate · VAT standard rate · VAT registration threshold · Private-sector minimum wage (lowest sectoral rate) · Public holidays · CPI inflation (year-on-year) · Corporate income tax rate · Withholding tax rates · Personal income tax brackets · Statutory social-insurance contributions
The same figure elsewhere: Togo · Tunisia · Uganda · Zambia · Algeria · all 34