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Tanzania Development Vision (TDV) 2025 (or Vision 2025) envisions Tanzania that is
“transformed from a low productivity agricultural economy to semi-industrialized one led by modernized and highly productive agricultural activities, which are integrated and buttressed by supportive industrial and services activities in the rural and urban areas. The development indicators in TDV 2025 comprise: (i) high quality livelihood; (ii) peace, stability and unity; (iii) good governance; (iv) a well-educated and learning society; and (v) a competitive economy capable of producing sustainable growth and shared benefits (URT, 1999).
Tanzania has attained a good average annual growth rate of GDP of 7 percent in the past 10 years or so. However, the indicators of poverty, as recent as 2011/12 Household Budget Survey show that basic needs poverty stands at 28.2 percent, with food poverty headcount at 9.1 percent. The rural areas are most hit although rising unemployment among the youth and urban poverty are becoming thorny.
This paper analyzes the growth pattern of Tanzania over the past decade or so (13 years of data points) and makes forward-looking policy options for a faster economic growth. In view of the widely-held notion of a strong two-way relationship between economic growth and human development (Boozer, Ranis, Stewart and Suri, 2003), it is maintained that economic growth can be sustained where human development elements are upgraded, particularly the human capital aspect through education and training, other elements of human development including health, sanitation, civil freedoms, participation etc. The human capital aspect is upheld as the foremost factor since it organizes the rest of the factors, innovation and competitiveness.
Section 2 describes Tanzania’s growth pattern and casts an impression of what it should be to attain the objectives of the country’s Vision 2025 and beyond and basic requirements for the required growth momentum. The “current growth pattern” as (i) sector growth rates and (ii) sector shares of GDP is described for the past 13 years depending on the availability of comparable data for major sector categories and respective sub-sectors as identified and classified by the NBS. Section 3 presents an outlook for the growth pattern towards 2025 with emphasis on physical infrastructure
and human capital (skills) development. Section 4 provides short concluding remarks. |
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