Sino-Tanzania trade heads to historical high

President Uhuru Kenyatta is pictured upon his arrival at Indira Gandhi International Airport for the Third India-Africa Forum Summit in New Delhi late on October 27, 2015. PHOTO | AFP 

By ANZETSE WERE

In Summary

• Trade between Kenya and India stood at $4.23 billion in 2014 and the country has been jostling with China for the top.
• India is also becoming an important lender to the continent; $8 billion was provided in Lines of Credit (LOCs) to Africa between 2008 and 2011 and Africa constitutes 53 per cent of India’s operative LOCs.

ABDUEL ELINAZA

TRADE volume between Tanzania and China has reached 2.31 billion US dollars (over 4.6tri/-) in the first half of this year. The level is slightly over the total amount reached last year of 4.32 billion US (8.6tri/-), an amount which China said is not enough.

The Chinese Embassy, Chief Economic and Commercial Representative, Mr Lin Zhiyong, said though the amount seemed huge, it was still too small. “Do you think the amount is big?,” Mr Lin asked journalists during press briefing for the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC).

“I say it’s small... and we can do more than that. FOCAC is an official forum between China and Africa.

There have been five summits held to date, with the most recent meeting having occurred from July 19-20, 2012 in Beijing, China. Previous summits were held in October 2000 in Beijing, December 2003 in Addis Ababa, November 2006 in Beijing, and November 2009 Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.

The amount of trading of Sino-Tanzania is fractional of the amount traded for China- Africa of 200 million US dollars last year. The economist said though the trade increased but it is in favour of China and his country pays high attention on promoting balanced trade.

“Chinese pays high attention to promote balanced development of China-Tanzania trade and has taken number of effective measures,” Mr Lin said. Mr Lin added: “We (Chinese) want to see this level of trade is at least half away.

Tanzania has a lot of products to sale to China.” For instance, China gives unilateral zero-tariff treatment to 97 per cent of products from Tanzania. Also it takes Dar es Salaam as unique country.

On top of that Sino-Tanzania has also enhanced cooperation in customs, inspection and quarantine, and several economic and trade cooperation. On foreign direct investments (FDI), the chief economist said he was confident that the amount invested last year would be increased this year and China becomes the largest investor to Tanzania.

“I am not satisfied with these (FDIs) figures, they are too small I hope China will be the biggest investor to Tanzania this year,” Mr Lin said.

Last year Beijing FDIs to Dar es Salaam clocked 4.0 billion US dollars and was growing fast. In the first ten months of this year China’s FDIs to Africa reached 95.2 billion US dollars and is expected to surpass 100 billion US dollar mark.