Informal Sector

According to the informal sector survey of 1991, small enterprises operating at that time in the informal sector alone numbered more than 1.7 million businesses, engaging about three million persons, accounting for about 20% of the country's labour force (United Republic Tanzania, 2003)

Hart (1973) used the term informal sector to describe "the urban sub-proletariat" in that country. Hart argued that the informal sector could be used to denote the existence of informality in the income-generating activities of the sub-proletariat. In Hart's view, the distinction between formal and informal income opportunities is based essentially on that between wage earning and self-employment.

In a broad term informal economy refers to that economy that is not taxed, monitored by government or included in the gross national product like the formal economy.It is part of the economy which is very rampant in the developing world.

Other terms used to refer to informal economy include black market, the shadow  economy, the underground economy and off the books economy.

Women are the greatest group in the informal economy because it is easy to employ oneself in the informal economy and it also it is easy to employ in this type of economy even from home or even in the street as a street vendors also most importantly is that most women in the developing world did not have access to education and therefore most know only the rules of the informal economy and the formal one.