Five-Year development plan goals not met .

CHRISTOPHER MAJALIWA in Dodoma

Deputy Finance Minister and Planning Dr Ashatu Kijaji.

THOUGH there is positive growth in various sectors when the country was implementing the Five Year Development Plan (FYDP I), the government has failed to hit the target in many areas.

The failure is attributed to significant financing gap attributable to inadequacy in public funds and inertial in the operationalisation of the public-private partnership (PPP) policy.

The FYDP I also contained strategies to mobilise financial resources for its implementation. It was estimated that a total of 44.5tril/- would be required to implement the plan, this translated to an equivalent of 8.9tril/- each year out of which 2.9tril/- was to be mobilised by the government and the remaining 6tril/- was to be financed by private sector.

In a comprehensive review report for Tanzania FYDP 2011/2012-2015/2016, the country recorded positive growth but fell short of target in many areas.

Speaking when tabling the report to MPs, Deputy Finance Minister and Planning Dr Ashatu Kijaji, said that some areas performed well while others not so well. She said that overall the FYDP I sought to attain an average economic growth of eight percent between 2010/2011 and 2015/2016.

Since 2010, however, real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has been growing at an average rate of around 6.7 per cent slightly below the target.

Dr Kijaji said that during the period under review, the fastest growing sectors were communications (15.3 per cent) construction (13.0 per cent), financial intermediation (9.9 per cent) and transport and storage (8.8 per cent).

Giving summary of the achievements in the five priority areas, Dr Kijaji said that in energy sector, installed power generation capacity increased from 900MW in 2010 to 1,246 MW in June 2015.

This is 44.8 per cent of the plan target of generating 2,780MW at the end of plan period. “Although the target was not reached, electricity generation has continued and is expected to improve following the completion of construction of gas pipeline from Mtwara to Dar es Salaam and completion of Kinyerezi I Power Plant which is expected to generate 150MW,” she told MPs.

In road transport, a total of 2,775km of road were constructed and rehabilitated to bitumen standard, equivalent to 53 per cent of the planned target of 5,204km. In the same period, the number of passengers handled in air transport increased from 3,437,608 in 2011 to 5,059,739 in 2014.

In Railway, 150km of the railway line with 80 pounds/yard rail were rehabilitated equivalent to 76.1 per cent of the target of rehabilitating 197km by the end of 2015/2016. In agriculture, there was considerable improvement in small-holder crop production, irrigation schemes, livestock production and export of both crop and livestock.

The Deputy Minister said that the sector grew from 2.7 per cent in 2010 to 3.4 in 2014 which is however, below FYDP I target of growth of six per cent per annum.

However, positive and satisfactory growth was recorded in the share of manufacturing sector as total export increased from 17 per cent in 2012 to 23 per cent in 2014 which is above the target of 19.1 per cent. In ports, cargo handling increased from 9.9 million tonnes in 2011/2012 to 14.6 million tonnes in 2014/2015.

The increase according to Dr Kijaji, was attributed to deployment of new and modern cargo handling equipment as well as increase of cargo handling time from 12 to 24 hours per day.