Economists outlines reasons for poor life standards in Tanzania

ALTHOUGH Tanzania government has been touting to show that its economy has grown up to a certain level, economists say that, the high inflation rates continues to haunt consumers of the basic human necessities mainly due to various factors including poor economic means of production. James Dyoya, an international trade economist said that, “there is no way people's life would be improved in the country if the basic means of economic production such as infrastructure would not be improved in order to help larger population of rural people whose economic activities relies on subsistence farming. Basing his factors on Tanzania context, he said that, Tanzania farmers do not produce to the satisfaction to enable the surplus to be sold outside the country an aspect that is causing the basic economy on the production of food crops to be into a lower scale. The situation is sometimes aggravated by high costs of imported fertilizers and farm chemicals used by farmers. In addition to that even to those lucky farmers who produces a substantial amount of food crops and manage to sell the surplus, are mostly affected by poor infrastructure when it comes to transportation of their food crops thus exacerbating the high costs which is characterized by high demand. The transport industry depends on imported fuel to run agricultural machineries such as tractors to enable cultivate large farms in rural areas, thus this dependence requires foreign money to purchase. Since most farmers are unable to do that, the probability of refilling the needy gap is impossible. About 85 percent of the goods sold in various local markets in the country are imported and 15 percent are locally manufactured. This trend in future will put Tanzania into a bad state of economy as it will be the market of other country's products. He said. However, he noted that fast moving commodities for basic human needs such as toothpaste, soaps, clothes, shoes, some edible oil, Jam and ointments and many others, have dominated the local market and this is a clear indication that, the locally produced goods do not satisfy the demand of consumers at the local market. The presence of imported goods at a local market is an indication which shows that, the structure of the national economy is low and moreover is squeezed into foreign dominated investment to the extent that large scale production of the basic needs is foreign owned. He also noted that, in large scale areas of productions such as in big factories like mining, breweries, cement factories, as well as in services orienting sectors such as in the Telecommunications industry whereby service economy is dominated by foreigners such as mobile operating companies. As a result foreigners dominates the economy as all the major economic resources are in their hands because of the fact that almost all bigger industrial production investments which attracts foreign currency are dominated by them. In order to counter all these, the government should count and list down the problems which are associated with the economic means of production especially in rural areas in a bid to expand the production capacity and set out various ways to curb the implementation plan so as to overcome the menace .According to his views, he suggests that, each ministry in the country should budget their problems in order to counter check them and see how to deal with each one of them if they would be likely to be invested in the form of projects. On the side of the national budget, he said looks at the recurrent expenditure which are to as greater extent is being financed by donors who impose conditions which can't give something tangible to eliminate the existing problems in the country. The reasons for this according to him is that, donor countries are the once who have invested in big industries in the country covering 95 percent of the national economy. Another economist Professor Humphrey Moshi of the University of Dar es Salaam says that, in order to punch out economic hardships among the people of Tanzania, the industrial economy should not be left in the hands of foreign investors as they hide huge profits back to their mother countries. According to him, he therefore suggests that, this must be controlled by the indigenous and private sectors in the country. On the other hand, he has said that, people especially the youths who constitute 80 percent of the workforce in every production unit must be made to work diligently in order to produce more.