By Lucas Liganga, The Citizen Chief Reporter
Dar es Salaam. At
last Tanzania will soon start full implementation of the African Peer
Review Mechanism (APRM), the African Union (AU) body that monitors
progress in governance and good practices.
Its implementation has
been dragging for the past seven years due to lack of funds, but the
ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation now has
allocated more than Sh2 billion for the work.
APRM aims at
monitoring progress in governance and good practices in four areas:
democracy and political governance, economic governance and management,
corporate governance and socioeconomic development.
Unveiling the
ministry’s 2011/12 budget in Dodoma last week, the minister for Foreign
Affairs and International Cooperation, Mr Bernard Membe, told the
National Assembly that the money would be available this financial year.
Reacting to the government’s move, the Tanzania APRM executive
secretary, Ms Rehema Twalib, said yesterday the Sh2 billion budget would
pave the way for reviewing and updating a 2009 country self-assessment
report which was prepared by the Tanzania APRM secretariat operating
under the ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.
“The
budget allocation is good news as we will also be able to repay the
country’s outstanding annual subscription of $700,000 (about Sh1
billion) to APRM,” she told The Citizen by phone.
The APRM annual
continental subscription is $100,000 (about Sh150 million) but Tanzania
has not honoured its subscription for the last seven years.
Ms
Twalib added that a review mission from the AU was expected to visit
Tanzania in September to validate and ascertain the contents of the
country self-assessment report before its submission to an AU summit.
The
country’s self-assessment report has addressed the four thematic areas
where the country is lagging behind and where it is faring well.
Governance
challenges that the report has identified include corporate governance,
economic governance and democracy and political governance.
Ms
Twalib said the report had identified that the socioeconomic development
area had a shortage of qualified staff in education and health sectors,
lack of markets for agricultural produce and poor infrastructure,
especially in rural areas.
On corporate governance, she said the
report pinpointed poor enforcement of rules and regulations that appear
to favour investors and giving them inadequate obligations, including
ensuring that workers are given handsome remunerations and creating
conducive working environment.
According to her, the report also
reveals a major problem in economic governance as poor trickledown of
economic benefits to the population.
The report also highlights
areas where Tanzania is doing relatively well. They include those in
maintaining a peaceful country brought up by the use of one common
language — Kiswahili — and successful succession of leadership every
after five years.
Other areas that the country is faring well
include gender balance, improvement in macroeconomic governance where
the problem remains translation of its successes to the people and
improved partnership between the government and the private sector.
There
has also been improvement in making public reports of the Controller
and Auditor General that enable people to monitor expenditure of the
taxpayers’ money.
There has been considerable improvement in the
construction of trunk roads but the challenge now should be to develop
feeder roads to enable farmers in rural areas to ferry their produce to
the markets.
Asked whether Sh2 billion was enough as the budget
for implementation of the entire APRM process is estimated at Sh4
billion, Ms Twalib said: “At least the Sh2 billion budget is an
indication that the government is serious towards implementation of the
APRM process.”
Political analysts say the country is likely to lose its credibility by not implementing the APRM process.
This
is the case because citizens believe that solving governance challenges
is a gateway to poverty alleviation. International development partners
believe that addressing governance challenges facing the country is a
bold step towards making the world a better place.
In May, more
than 50 civil society organisations met in Dar es Salaam and raised
concern over the government’s dilly-dallying in implementing APRM.
They said the APRM process was a significant mechanism to audit governance in Africa, including Tanzania.
Uganda, Rwanda and Ghana that have seriously committed themselves to the process.
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