The 2018 Financial Secrecy Index, a tool for measuring global financial secrecy and secrecy jurisdictions, presents some worrying signs for the emerging economies in Africa and threaten to potentially undermine the sustainability of their development trajectory. Tanzania scored a high secrecy score of 73. Surprisingly, even with these attractive secrecy policies, it is only recently that the jurisdiction has been brought under the spotlight.

For a country like Tanzania to meet its inclusive development objectives and realistically fund essential services such as provision of clean and safe water, healthcare, education and infrastructure, it needs reliable sources of own revenue including from taxes. Moreover, an economy needs a tax policy that redistributes wealth to address inequality including redressing gender gaps within society.

The Policy Forum (PF) Budget Working Group welcomes yet another opportunity to share views regarding the performance of previous budgets and propose some recommendations that we believe are worth consideration during current parliamentary deliberations for the 2018/19 budget to be concluded late in June.

The Executive Director of Kepa, a Finnish NGO network, Timo Lappalainen (left) and Communications Officer Mirka Kartano (first right) with Policy Forum Coordinator, Semkae Kilonzo (second left) and Kepa Tanzania Country Director, Bakar Khamis Bakar (second right).

The recently released 2016/17 Controller & Auditor General Report has revealed a number of challenges relating to effective financial accountability at the local level including under and over-disbursements, massive amounts of unspent funds by local government authorities, drop in revenue collections and ineffective use of spent monies.

Findings of the 2017 survey conducted by the International Budget Partnership (IBP) reveals that Tanzania has scored a lowly 10 out of 100, implying it is a country that provides scant or no information on public budgets. IBP considers countries that score above 60 on the Open Budget Index as providing sufficient budget information to enable the public to engage in budget discussions in an informed manner.

Tanzania is among the countries that adopted the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and translating the same to its own development initiatives  such as the Development Vision 2025  and the Five Year Development Plan II (2016/17 – 2020/21).

Agenda 2030 provides an unheralded opportunity to address the persistent challenges facing the world, including poverty, growing inequalities, and environmental degradation. Through it, world leaders have committed to addressing the economic, social and environmental issues standing in the way of sustainable development. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide an opportunity to build on positive national development and address fundamental challenges in comprehensive and systematic ways.

Although Tanzania is now acknowledged as one of the fastest growing economies in the world, this progress has not translated to major changes in the lives of ordinary Tanzanians. The reasons for this are many but tax incentives, tax evasion and avoidance and illicit capital flows to tax havens have been pinpointed as some of the factors that limit the country from raising adequate funds to improve service delivery.

Natural resource management and conservation in Tanzania can be improved by enhancing people-centred governance by putting in place organisational structures and processes that support community participation. This was said at the breakfast debate hosted by Policy Forum on 24th November, 2017 dedicated on the theme entitled, “People- Centered Land Governance: The solution for protecting the rights of the poor and vulnerable in Tanzania?.”