By TZ Business News Staff.
Fresh ideas to boost the troubled Tanzania economy are set to be churned out in Dodoma, the country’s administrative capital, this last week of November 2021 as experts in finance, business and economy meet to brainstorm.
The Bank of Tanzania (BoT) has invited pundits in the fields to attend on November 25 and 26, 2021 the 20th Conference of Financial Institutions to be held at the Jakaya Kikwete Convention Center in Dodoma.
The main conference theme is ‘Tanzania Economy: Recovery from COVID-19 Pandemic and Beyond’. President Samia Suluhu Hassan is Guest of Honor. A conference schedule made public 21 November, 2021 identifies four sub-themes which by their nature promise fresh ideas from deliberations.
Conference sub-themes include economic growth and sustainability during and beyond COVID-19 pandemic (priorities and policy options), Accelerating digitalization for recovery and sustainable growth, Digital currencies (experiences, risks and regulatory issues)–and Scaling up private sector credit (role of Government, financial institutions and the private sector).
This conference takes place against a backdrop of economic doldrums. The World Bank has recently described the current Tanzania economy as ‘dire’, where economic growth has slowed significantly.
The real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate fell from 5.8% in 2019 to an estimated 2.0% in 2020, and per capital growth turned negative for the first time in more than 25 years,” according to the World Bank. Steep declines in production, consumption, and imports have significantly reduced fiscal revenue.
The [Covid-19] pandemic has also compounded pre-existing challenges in the financial sector, and the share of non-performing loans on bank balance sheets continue to be high while growth of credit to the private sector has slowed, the World Banks says.
In 2020, the pandemic-induced economic slowdown caused the poverty rate to rise to an estimated 27.2%, compounding the effect of population growth on the absolute number of people living in poverty.
At the time of writing this post, 22 November 2021, Tanzania is also experiencing power cuts which undermine industrial productivity.
