Malaysia offers tips as Vision 2025 is faulted Send to a friend
Wednesday, 03 April 2013 23:00
Dar es Salaam. A 30-member team of Malaysian experts are coaching 300
Tanzanian experts on how the country can move forward by implementing six
priority areas articulated in the Tanzania National Development Vision 2025.
But as the four-month coaching ends today at the White Sands Hotel,
participants in a two-day annual research workshop organised by Research on
Poverty Alleviation (Repoa) has described the Vision 2025 as only words on
paper, saying nothing has been done to date to implement it.
The Development Vision 2025 was developed in the 1990s and came into
operation in 2000. The Vision 2025 outlines broad national long-term goals,
perspectives and aspirations.In 2009, Planning Commission conducted a study
to review the implementation of the Vision 2025 with a view of assessing
what has been done so far, identify gaps and propose the way forward.
Mr Chris Tan, director for Performance Management and Delivery Unit
(Pemandu), a Malaysian government agency conducting the coaching, said the
coaching focused on six priority areas identified by the government of
Tanzania.
He mentioned the areas as agriculture, education, water, energy, transport
and resource mobilization, priorities articulated in the Vision 2025.
He said the Malaysian experts on these areas were coaching their Tanzanian
counterparts from ministries, government departments and agencies, and the
private sector under guidance from the Planning Commission.
He told The Citizen in an interview at Kunduchi Beach Hotel and Resort—the
venue of the workshop—that the training followed an intervention by
President Jakaya Kikwete last year.
“The process began after it was approved by the Tanzanian cabinet. We held
a meeting with ministers in Dodoma in August last year,” said Mr Tan.
Giving his experience on how Malaysia, a developing country, rose from a
poor country to an upper class society, Chris said the secret behind the
country’s success story was that “the country has a strong directive
leadership has been able to get things get moving”.
“The key to success is to have a strong directive leadership that will get
things moving,” said Mr Tan.
He said when Malaysia started moving forward the country identified six
priorities, including how to tackle crime and corruption.
“Our focus was on implementation and not on policy statements. Policy is a
living document. What is important is to get things done. And we don’t need
a PhD to do this,” he told his audience of academics, researchers, private
sector, development partners, political leaders, government officials and
civil society organizations. Sharing key lessons from the Malaysian
experience, Mr Ali Mufuruki, chairman of the CEO Roundtable Tanzania, said
although there was nothing wrong with the Vision 2025 there was a number of
things that missed towards the realization of the Vision.
For example, Mr Mufuruki said there was lack of detailed attention on the
implementation of the document, adding that there was also no timelines of
its implementation as years slipped by.“And I don’t remember if there has
been any budget figure for the Vision 2025,” he said adding that Tanzania
was good at planning but when it came to implementation nothing got done.
Mr Mufuruki also discouraged the foreign dependency syndrome saying: “There
has been over dependence on foreign aid. We have to be very careful. It’s
our ideas, it’s our experience that will shape where we go.”
He wondered why crime and corruption did not feature in Tanzania’s priority
areas of implementation. “If we seriously don’t deal with crime and
corruption none of the other priorities are going to work,” Mr Mufuruki
added.
Prof Ibrahim Lipumba, chairman of opposition Civic United Front (CUF), said
the problem with Vision 2025 was that it is more a technocratic exercise
than a political exercise.
“Vision 2025 is not a political statement by a political leadership,” he
said, adding that the Arusha Declaration was a political vision but had
problems over implementation.
He said the problem with Tanzania was that the country has too many policy
documents that were not integrated, citing the review of the constitution
and the making of new identification cards as examples.
“We had a slogan that said we must run while others walk but we have ended
up crawling why others fly,” said Prof Lipumba, an economist by profession.
Mtwara Regional Commissioner, Colonel (rtd) Joseph Simbakalia, said it was
not possible to achieve anything without a strong leadership.
Mr Damas Dandi, founder of Building Africa, said Tanzania did not need to
learn from Malaysia or Indonesia on how to get things moving.“We have been
talking about what we are talking today since the Nyerere era. Let us put
the Vision 2025 into practice,” he said.
Prof Benno Ndulu, governor of the Bank of Tanzania, explained challenges
that Tanzania needed to address if it wanted to go the Malaysian way.The
workshop was opened by the Vice-President, Dr Mohamed Gharib Bilal, who
said the impressive GDP growth has not significantly helped to reduce
poverty.