Tanzania: We Are Committed to Support Informal Sector Growth, Says ILO

THE International Labour Organisation (ILO) country office has reiterated its commitment to support Tanzania in transforming informal sector into a very vibrant sector of the economy.

ILO country Director for Tanzania, Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda Wellington Chibebe said with majority of young people and women are employed in the sector, it is where the future of

most African economies base.

He noted that in Africa, in combined figure, informal economy constitutes 85 per cent of the continent's economy and in sub-Saharan Africa it was even higher.

He added that those in the informal economy are youth and women who in every society they form the backbone of the society hence cannot be forgotten.

"Informal sector is a very critical sector as far as the future of Africa is concerned because it forms about 85 per cent of national economies in the continent employing mostly youth and women," he stressed.

Mr Chibebe was speaking after being briefed by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) acting Director of Population and Housing Census Ruth Minja of the progress of the ongoing 2019 Informal Sector Survey taking place in Dar es Salaam region.

He said ILO believes with that kind of statistics government can take on board the informal economy and ensure that the informal economy is not a forgotten sector in the sense that when people talk of foreign direct investment for example it always targets formal economy whereas majority of people are in informal economy.

The country director revealed that the first study on informal sector in Africa was done by ILO in early seventies in Kenya and since then its organisation has been supporting African to undertake those kind of surveys.

He added that during his recent visit in Kenya, he learnt that the informal economy currently contributes about 34 per cent in country's GDP.

He said when ILO was approached by NBS to support the Survey, it was more than happy to come on board and that it now provides technical assistance in the form of training and data collection and processing tools. "ILO is not a donor agency we only give instruments.

We provide technical support in the form of training and provision of modern data collection tools," he said and insisted that ILO works only on the national priorities where a country "tells us where it wants to go and how so we can support to do so."

The country director later participated in a high level supervision of the Survey accompanied by NBS officials, representative from Dar es Salaam Regional Administrative Secretary who is Principal Statistician Mr Joseph Nyahende and Kipunguni ward local leaders.

Briefing the ILO country Director at NBS offices before the field visit, NBS acting director of Population Census Mrs Ruth Minja said so far the exercise was going smoothly and NBS was optimistic that the survey would meet the intended objectives.

"The household-based phase was very successful with response rate of 99 per cent while on the business phase the field work is on the final stage where 1,953 businesses out of 2,025 which is equivalent to 96.4 per cent have enumerated by September 25, 2019," she explained.