VP stresses removal of barriers to revitalise economy
BY DICKSON NG`HILY, THe GuardIAN
4th April 2013
Email
Print
Vice-President Dr Mohamed Billal
Vice-President Dr Mohamed Billal said yesterday that Tanzania needs the
existence of appropriate policy instruments, public investment and
mechanism to ensure that people engage in productive economic activities.
“Our government has continued to put emphasis on policy reforms and
increasing public investment aiming at eliminating barriers to progress and
development,” he told participants attending a REPOA annual research
workshop in Dar es Salaam.
He said that new challenges emerge continuously which need continuous
thinking and innovation on effective means of addressing them.
“Our economy has remained primarily agricultural, which contribute to about
24 percent of the GDP. The sector employs about 75 percent of the national
labour force, yet agricultural productivity and rural incomes remain low,”
he said.
“It is equally true that access to various economic and social services are
not universally similar across urban and rural areas. This is not a
desirable condition for inclusive development, but it is not an easy task
to resolve either,” he added.
Such condition, the Vice-President said, sets a clear argument for more
proactive role of the state in economic management so that long-run
outcomes of economic activities pursued by all actors, market and
non-market are geared towards inclusive development.
He explained that proactive engagement of the state includes the setting of
national development priorities and coordinating their implementation of
which the Planning Commission has increasingly played its role in setting
development priorities and framework for coordination and motoring of
implementation.
“Tanzania has made enormous strides in promoting inclusive development,
especially through increased access to education and health services, and
in improving economic infrastructure,” he said.
However, Dr Billal said challenges remain immense and that research can
play a big role in achieving a common goal.
Delivering a keynote paper on the importance of understanding stakeholder
nuances in the quest for inclusive growth, the Director of Performance
Management and Delivery Unit (Pemandu) in Malaysia, Datuk Chris Tan, said
the key to success lies with strong leadership.
He said the quality and quantity of policy may be debated by policymakers
but what’s more important is leadership to take first step towards their
realisation and set the direction for the rest of the people.
“This strong directive leadership is required only in the nation’s infancy.
We must give the captain of a ship, the freedom to plot the cause for the
journey,” he pointed out.
Any economic success, he said, does not just happen; there must be someone
fully committed to policy implementation as well as provide a room for the
people to participate.
REPOA’s Executive Director Prof Samwel Wangwe said that the annual research
workshop would discuss the transmission mechanism of growth to poverty
reduction which seems to be constrained by low growth rate of agricultural
sector, low productivity in the informal economy and increasing
unemployment.
“This condition calls for renewed policy dialogue and strategies to promote
inclusive economic growth and social development, exploration of the nature
of policies and institutional interventions required for Tanzania to
achieve high and inclusive growth as envisioned in the National Development
Vision 2015,” he said.
Prof Wangwe said that the workshop theme is ‘The Quest for Inclusive
Development’ and experts and distinguished scholars selected strategically
both from inside and outside the country, would share their experiences of
the inclusive development in different sectors of the economy.
Inclusive growth as a strategy of economic development received attention
owing to a rising concern that the benefits of economic growth have not
been equitably shared.
Experts say growth is inclusive when it creates economic opportunities
along with ensuring equal access to them.
Apart from addressing the issue of inequality, the inclusive growth may
also make poverty reduction efforts more effective by explicitly creating
productive economic opportunities for the poor and vulnerable sections of
the society.
The inclusive growth by encompassing the hitherto excluded population can
bring in several other benefits as well to the economy, economists say.
The concept ‘Inclusion’ is seen as a process of including the excluded as
agents whose participation are essential in the very design of the
development process, and not simply as welfare targets of development
programmes.