Industrial policy faulted
What you need to know:
Economists yesterday called on Tanzania to draw up a comprehensive industrial policy to enable the private sector to play its part fully in national development.
Dar es Salaam. Economists yesterday called on Tanzania to draw up a comprehensive industrial policy to enable the private sector to play its part fully in national development.
The policy should enumerate the number of factories, annual production, how many people are employed there and what the country plans to achieve in industrialisation. The current one lacks such details.
Prof Justin Yifu Lin from Peking University told the 21st Repoa’s Annual Research Workshop here yesterday: “Tanzania and other African countries can grow as dynamically as any successful countries in East Asia and other parties of the world if the government facilitates private firms to capture the window of opportunity of industrialisation from the pending relocation of light manufacturing.”
The theme of the two-day workshop is ‘Making industrialisation work for socioeconomic transformation’. He also advised Tanzania to focus on small and medium-size enterprises because they are labour-intensive and can employ many young people and reduce poverty unlike big industries that use more technologies and employ. “If your country is not in industrialised the problem is within the government and in the private sector. The government should work on the challenge.”
Tanzania Private Sector Foundation executive director Godfrey Simbeye told the workshop that for country to industrialise infrastructure woes should be addressed.
He called on the government to establish a sustainable ICT programme for youth to increase skills in processing areas as well as improve research centres.
“In previous years we had a good industrial policy but, as usual, we are good in making policies and implementing them is another problem.”
Economics professor Ibrahim Lipumba said the private sector should be given an opportunity to play its part fully. “We have been advised by the speaker from China on what we should do. He stressed good policies.”
Earlier Vice President Samia Suluhu Hassan called on workshop participants to come up with concrete proposals on what Tanzania should do to industrialise.
