Let's do more for our development

BY EDITOR

17th May 2013

Editorial Cartoon

No country can realise its growth objectives or development goals if it does not ensure that its people can and do effectively engage in productive activities.

For that to happen, there must be efficiency-enhancing conditions, this meaning having not only policies that encourage efficiency but also the regulatory capacity to implement those policies.

One of the planks of Tanzania’s development vision is adding value to most agricultural products and other natural resources by processing them to enable them earn the country better prices in the world market.

Indeed, it is both about processing the farm produce and other natural resources and serving all the other sectors of the economy.

The concept of the basic industry strategy, partly implemented during the era of the erstwhile planned economy, was to build industries which provided implements and inputs to the other sectors of the economy to ensure efficient production of goods and services.

Of course, not all worked to the expected levels of delivery and sustainability, as some of the assumptions were unrealistic. For instance, the market was too small.
Overly dependent on imported raw materials as they were, the production units soon found themselves without enough foreign exchange to buy stocks. It was small wonder, then, that work eventually ground to a halt.

That is why it is important to be more realistic in implementing the new industrial policy as the part of the Vision 2025; avoiding the above experience but more importantly ensuring the production units really grow the national economy. The vision calls for a strong and smart facilitating and regulating framework.

Tanzania sees the industrial base for this kind of activity up and running by 2025. While this seems a realistic goal, it requires coordinated implementation of the various plans. We are talking about the need for government institutions that will create conditions supportive of the various actors.

Knowing as we do that with liberalisation we are looking at the bulk of the investment coming from the private sector, we need to ensure that these are properly enabled to execute the task. But can we claim to have the institutions that are ready for the task ahead?

The answer is that we need to do more. We say so after learning that the Industries and Trade ministry, which is the coordinator and the watchdog of the industrial vision, is facing a serious shortage of budgetary resources. The National Assembly was told the other day that only 23 per cent of the 2012/2013 budget endorsed for the ministry was actually received.

With such meagre resources, do we realistically expect the ministry to efficiently oversee the implementation of Vision 2025 and any other development strategies?
Indeed, the ministry’s failure to enforce the agreements entered into with some of the investors who acquired the former public production units could well be due to lack of resources!

In the last four years or so, the ministry has failed to give account of the state of the units after they were acquired when it was told that some of the new owners have flouted transfer terms. Just how can it deliver on the vision when it is so starved of resources? 

SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN