CURRENT account deficit has narrowed to more than half to 1,885.3 million US dollars in June 2016 compared to 4,343.5 million US dollars of the same period last year.
According to the Bank of Tanzania (BoT)
monthly economic review for June this year, the development was largely
driven by improved performance of non-traditional exports and services,
coupled with a decline in imports, particularly oil.
The performance of exports of goods and
services slightly improved to 10,096.9 million US dollars compared with
the 9,310.6 million US dollars in the year ending June 2015 due to
diverse domestic and external factors.
The improvement, however, was manifested in non-traditional export commodities and services receipts.
In fact, a large part of the improvement
occurred in travel which is mainly tourism, manufactured goods and
gold. Foreign exchange earnings from traditional exports were lower than
in the corresponding period in 2015.
The value of traditional exports dropped
by 8.8 percent to 828.0 million US dollars driven by volume and prices.
Notably, cotton and cashew nut declined on account of both volume and
prices, while tobacco recorded low export value following a decline in
price.
The fall in prices of these traditional
export crops was consistent with the general decline in commodity prices
in the world market.
The increase in global production was a
major contributing factor. Export of cotton also declined, but this was
due to low production during 2015/16 crop-season following unfavourable
weather and delays in procurement and application of inputs.
By contrast, foreign exchange earnings
from export of sisal and coffee increased the former owing to a rise in
both volume and prices and the later manifested only in export volume.
As regards non-traditional exports, the
value increased by 15.3 percent to 4,595.1 million US dollars, driven
mostly by manufactured goods, gold, diamond, re-exports and several
small exports classified under ‘other exports1’
In particular, manufactured goods grew
by 11.1 percent to 1,462.6 million US dollars, with a notable
improvement recorded in exports of textile apparel and plastic items.
Gold export, which constitutes the
largest share of nontraditional exports, recovered slightly amidst
subdued prices in the recent period. This time around, it improved by
7.9 percent to 1,334.6 million US dollars as result of increase in
export volume
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