Browsing: Tanzania

The Mercer 2020 gives the cost of living in African cities giving the most expensive and least expensive cities to live in Africa in its Cost of living survey.

The annual survey ranks cities cost of living based on the prices of goods and services such as rent, food and clothing.

The survey is mostly used by multinational organisations to set remuneration packages for their foreign-based employees.

“The Covid-19 pandemic reminds us that sending and keeping employees on international assignments is a huge responsibility and a difficult task to manage,” said Ilya Bonic, career president and head of Mercer Strategy.

According to the report, in East Africa, Kampala Uganda is the least expensive city to live in while Nairobi Kenya is the most expensive city, Kigali Rwanda takes the second least-expensive city followed by Dar-es-Salaam Tanzania.

Also Read: Cost of living to go up for EAC

The report sampled 40 …

In an interesting development, while demand for gold is on the rise all over the world, gold output in Zimbabwe has fallen 17 percent in the last four months.

Why? Well, because of Covid-19. Strange because it is a result of the pandemic that world demand for gold is on the rise as people try to store the value of their money in gold.

Yet in Zimbabwe, small scale miners in the country are failing to conduct their mining activities because the country does not have the needed cash to buy mining inputs. Well let’s not say the country doesn’t have cash because it does, its just that no one will accept the Zimbabwean dollar.

Also Read: Barrick Gold back to business with Tanzania

So the trouble is that, Zimbabwe relies on other currencies, like the US dollar to make large and small payments alike like explosives among other things. …

As hotels in East Africa are closing their doors as the effects of the global pandemic continue to bite, Tanzania is making moves to ward off the negative effects of Covid-19 by resuming business as usual, including in its tourism and hospitality sector.

In fact only this past week, Tanzania has announced that it will host its first Mafia Island Tourism Exhibition Week. The ambitious and bold move is in line with other measures that the country is taking to revive its tourism sector.

The country has already set aside millions of dollars to improve tourists experience at one of its major attractions, Mt Kilimanjaro. Tanzania has set aside money to cut out a new route to climb the mountain. This new route is exclusive for VIP tourists and other VIP personnel and is expect to boost tourism in the region.

Also Read: Tanzania’s Tourism Board unveils luxury route to

When rich folks want to climb to the highest peak of Africa, they no longer have to scrimmage with the rest of us along the old narrow foot tracks, no, they now have an exclusive route cut just for Very Important People (VIP).

In an unprecedented move, the government of Tanzania has decided to construct 25-kilometre of road up Mount Kilimanjaro in a bid to provide for the needs of the World’s richest.

The features of this VIP route have not been made public but it is expected to be exclusive, private and only for select few who can afford it. Tanzania, has some of the World’s must see tourist attractions that attract some of the World’s elite.

Arguably, a Prince so and so along with CEOs of multibillion dollar companies as well a Hollywood famous faces, would like to visit these attractions without attracting too much attention.

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Tanzania Budget 2020/2021

The Tanzanian Minister of finance and planning, Dr Philip Mpango brought the fifth government’s revenue and expenditure estimates for the year 2020/2021 before the parliament, and around $15 billion was the requested budget to be endorsed.

The anticipated document—which is also the fifth national budget under President John Magufuli administration, was somewhat a mix of recovery from COVID-19 economic shocks, a progression of development initiatives and a rather relief to several sections of the economy, including scratching off some levies and giving income earners relief.

“The year 2019/20 is ending with unexpected circumstances resulting from the destruction of transport infrastructure caused by heavy rains/floods across the country as well as the Covid-19 pandemic. The government is compelled to allocate more resources.,” Finance and Planning Minister Philip Mpango told Parliament yesterday

Also, as Tanzania reopens its economy after assessing the trend of the pandemic, the minister said that …

For over two months now, companies in Tanzania are holding back contractors and supplier payments blaming it on a lack of funds due to the global coronavirus crisis.

Chinese companies are particularly in the spotlight with suppliers complaining of delayed payments for goods delivered and services done. In an exclusive with this paper, an aggregate mine operator (name withheld) said payments due to the company from Chinese companies are still pending two months down the road.

This is the exact scenario that the government tried to evade when it throughout the Central Bank, Bank of Tanzania, it released a stimulus package to cushion the economy to ensure business stay liquid and are able to make all due payments.

It is not far fetched to think companies are taking advantage of the ongoing health crisis not to pay their debts or even government taxes and fees. I mean, non performing loans …

Tanzania has joined the rest of the continent in lowering borrowing rates for commercial banks in a bid to maintain their liquidity.

Tanzania’s Central Bank the Bank of Tanzania, (BoT) has cut down interest on borrowing from 7 percent to 5 percent, a move that has been welcomed by the business community.

It has also chopped rates on government securities by half, starting with treasury bills which it brought down to 5 percent from 10 percent and treasury bonds to from 40 percent to 20 percent.

These latest series of monetary measure is backed with the lowering of the required minimum cash reserve that commercial banks are otherwise required to maintain at the Central Bank.

The goal is to stimulate the economy by giving commercial banks the leeway to lower their lending rates which in turn should see business access the operating capital they need. The BoT did not stop …

When something grows by 50 percent, we say it has doubled, when it grows by 100 percent, it has quadrupled and so on and so forth. You want to know by how much telecommunication companies in Rwanda have grown during the onslaught of the coronavirus? I will tell you, an amazing 450 percent.

According to the Rwanda Utilities Regulation Authority, between January and April alone, telecom companies in Rwanda have amassed over USD 42 million that is an average of USD 10 million a month.

This impressive performance is representative of a drastic paradigm shift, the migration from a pre-dominantly cash based society to one that has gone almost absolutely cashless. Rwanda has in the fight against the spread of coronavirus gone cashless, switching from use of cash payments to digital platforms via mobile money transfers.

Last month, The Exchange published an article titled Digital Africa in which it was …

The executive board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved a $14.3 grant under its Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust (CCRT) yesterday to assist Tanzania in servicing its debt to October 13, 2020.

According to the lender statement, further allocation of additional relief covering the period of October 14, 2020, to April 13, 2022, will be granted subject to the availability of resources in the CCRT, potentially bringing total relief on debt service to the equivalent of about $25.7 million.

Tanzania has been one of many countries in Africa where it’s the fast-growing economy was shaken by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

As crucial sectors including tourism, travel and exports were hurt—the IMF equivocally noted that the debt service relief will aid “alleviating Tanzania’s balance of payment needs stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic,”

Tanzania’s closest lender also took the liberty to address various issues including debt service anticipated impacts …

The effects of Covid-19 have continued being felt in the East African region despite governments developing various interventions to counter them.  Interventions have included the provision of healthcare remedies as well as stimulus plans to bail out communities who have been ravaged by the pandemic. The highlight of the inter-East African relations has been a diplomatic tiff between Kenya and Tanzania that had threatened the livelihoods of the region who depend on the two strongest economies.

The markets in the region have remained slow with the economies expected to get a hit for months to come. Various entities including the World Bank have revised their projections of the growth of the region’s economy. The triple effects of Covid-19, floods and locusts have made the economies of this region suffer greatly. Kenya has also received a negative rating by Moody based on her rising debt.

In this edition, we highlight how …