CEOrt calls for year 2015 to make new approaches on job creation

The CEO Roundtable Tanzania (CEOrt) has reiterated its commitment to continue working in cooperation with the government with a view to end impediments in four major areas of economic development in the country for the year 2015. The Chairman of CEOrt Ali Mufuruki made the observation last week in Dar es Salaam when addressing fellow members at a gala dinner ceremonial event organized by the CEOrt. This is an annual event which brings together members of the CEO roundtable who meet to deliberate the successes and how to overcome impediments and other failures for the next coming year. He cited creation of meaningful jobs for Tanzanians with studies from the World Bank showing that it is among the core issues. World Bank statistics shows that almost one million young people are faced with employment crisis and thus resort to join labour market in Tanzania every year.  He said with the rising statistics, the CEOrt need to create an enabling environment to sort the problem out on an even bigger scale bearing in mind the fact that, young people are very creative even when they lack education and formal skills. “We need to this outside the box, in spite of many problems faced by the young citizens of our country and indeed all countries in Africa, they have demonstrated an incredible ability to create new jobs for themselves”, he said adding that, they are creating far more jobs than the conventional job creators in the public and private sectors. Mufuruki gave an example of film industries in the country and compared it with that one of Kenya and Nigeria and elsewhere on the continent for example has been created by young people with very little if any support from governments.  

The Chairman of the CEO Roundtable in Tanzania Ali Mufuruki

However, he noted that in this sector young people are very creative even when they lack education and formal skills these industries are employing millions and paying taxes to the exchequer. In view of this, he has however directed fellow executives to support their support by allowing them space to be creative, urging them to invest in their ideas so that their small start-ups can achieve scale. Other areas of concentration Mufuruki highlighted include efforts to end up pervasive corruption, frequent power blackouts and big decisions on conservation of country’s biodiversity.  The first two have been drawing back the economic development of most Tanzanians notably the low income earners. In this aspect, the CEO Boss stressed the need of making use of a test driving concept of Public Private Partnership (PPP) as an effective vehicle for delivering service initiatives to the people in the country. Under the concept, he has called for a joint collaboration from the government bearing the fact that PPP is a new concept and because of its complexity it required good preparation. CEOrt is a policy dialogue forum that brings together CEOs from over 80 top companies doing business in Tanzania. The members of the Roundtable and the companies they lead account for more than 40 percent of the tax revenue collected by the government of Tanzania. Every year the CEO Roundtable of Tanzania recognises the importance of private sector in economic growth and the forum continue working closely with the government to bring about development.