Tanzania slips in World Bank report on Doing Business

By Samuel Kamndaya,

The Citizen Reporter

Friday, 05 November 2010 09:49

Tanzania is the only country in East Africa that has made not even a single reform in two years, according to the Doing Business 2011 Report, launched yesterday by the WB and its private sector-leaning arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC). The country has therefore dropped four steps further in the ease of doing business. It is now ranked 128th out of 183 countries surveyed throughout the year to June 2010. The report considers ten regulations which are key to doing business in any economy. But Ms Joyce Mapunjo, the Permanent Secretary of the ministry of Industry, Trade and Marketing defended the government saying that the report was outdated in the sense that it had not captured couple of reforms that the country had recently done.

“There is number of reforms that the report is silent on…since October for example, business registration is now being done electronically in every district in the country by our business officers, the move that has helped in fast registration,” she said.

Tanzania Investment Centre (TIC) executive director, Mr Emmanuel Ole Naiko

 “This is a wake up call…it’s time we seriously implemented what such global reports want us to do…..it’s good that we already know the problems and that we only need to start working on them”

When exactly is the Tanzanian government going to start working on the problems in the Silverdale Farm case where brutal, overt and vicious corruption was invoked by Benjamin Mengi to steal the lease to Silverdale and Mbono Farms. Having stolen it, the courts and judiciary issue corrupt and vile orders in abuse of law trashing the investors rights and behaving as if they had never existed in Tanzania.

Mr Ole Naiko himself stated to the British government that the lease to the farms belonged to the British investors and yet the Tanzanian Investment Centre sat back and did nothing to prevent the theft and has said nothing since to defend the rights of the British investors.

Kikwete's former Minister of Investment Dr. Juma Ngasongwa publicly and in the governments own media the Daily News stated that the investors were bona fide and had the full support of the Ministry and yet the Tanzanian courts have sanctioned Mengi's theft of the lease and are issuing judgment in court as if the investors never every existed in Tanzania.

The Silverdale Farm case is an indictment on Tanzania and on the promises made by Kikwete personally to the British government that he would apply the rule of law to the case. You can ignore this case, pretend it never existed abuse every law in Tanzania to make is go away.

It will not!!!