Kikwete: Why Tanzania still performs poorly in economy

The citizen 

President Jakaya Kikwete deliverers a keynote speech at the USAID Frontiers in Development Forum: Ending Extreme Poverty at the Reagan Building in Washington DC on yesterday

President Jakaya Kikwete has blamed economic policies Tanzania adopted after independence for bad economic performance of the country.

He said it was one of the factors that has put Tanzania in the category of Less Developed Countries (LDCs) since the classification begun in the 1970s.

Delivering his keynote speech on Thursday in Washington DC at USaid forum on ‘Frontiers in Development: Ending Extreme Poverty’, the President said the ideology held dear by the founding father of the nation Mwalimu Julius Nyerere failed to deliver.

Stating why 33 out of 48 World’s Least Developed Countries are in Africa, the President said majority of the countries (25) are victims of conflicts but some like Tanzania have enjoyed political stability and are still in the LCD bracket something he said in his view is a function of the economic policies pursued, in the first two and half decades since independence.

“My dear country Tanzania is a typical example of a country that enjoyed uninterrupted peace and stability since independence yet we are one of the LDCs from 1971 when the classification started. Besides a hostile global environment, economic policies pursued soon after independence which did not succeed has a big hand in this state of affairs,” said President Kikwete.

The President told the participants of the forum including the Vice President of World Bank, Mr Mark Diop, and the USaid administrator, Dr Rajiv Shah, that the economic outlook began to change after the introduction of economic reforms from the 1980s.

“We have stayed the cause of reforms ever since with remarkable success. The country is now enjoying strong macro-economic performance with the last decade being exceptionally successful. Overall economic growth has increased from an average of 3.5 per cent in the 1990s to the average of about 7 per cent over the last decade.”

President Kikwete, however, conceded that despite the growth, poverty reduction has not been correspondingly impressive. In the last two decades income poverty declined from 39 per cent in 1990 to 28.2 per cent in 2012, a decline of about 11 per cent.

“This explains why we will not be able to meet the MDG target of halving extreme poverty below the 1990 baseline by 2015.

However, we have been successful with regard to reducing by a half the proportion of population living below the national food poverty line. This declined from 21.6 per cent in 1990 to 9.7 per cent in 2012, a decline of about 12 per cent.”