Speech ya Mwalim Mwaka Mpya 1980, Hali hapa ilikuwa ngumu na Mwalimu anaonyesha kabisa ataka kukimbia office.
Your excellencies: Tanzania needs peace-in Africa and elsewhere. But the major economic problems which have preoccupied us in recent months, and which darken the coming year, were not caused by the war against Amin's Uganda, nor the African struggle for freedom. These make things worse; they added to the strain on our resources and deflected our attention at an important time. But we were experiencing inflation before October 1978; our balance of payments was in serious deficit before that war; oil price increases have nothing to do with events in East or southern Africa.
These externally caused problems are obvious, and so is our need for an injection of balance of payments support. What recently became equally obvious to me but nevertheless strange and repugnant was the attempt by the International Monetary Fund to exploit those difficulties in order to interfere with the
management of our economy.
The IMF always lays down conditions for using any of its facilities. We therefore expected that there would be certain conditions imposed should we desire to use the IMF Extended Fund Facility. But we expected these conditions to be non-ideological, and related to ensuring that money lent to us is not wasted, pocketed by political leaders or bureaucrats used to build private villas at home or abroad, or deposited in private Swiss Bank accounts.
We also accepted that we could justly be asked how we were planning to deal with the problem in the medium or longer term. We could then have accepted or rejected such conditions, but we would not have felt it necessary to make a strong and public protest.
Tanzania is not prepared to devalue its currency just because this is a traditional free market solution to everything and regardless of the merits of our position. It is not prepared to surrender its right to restrict imports by measures designed to ensure that we import quinine rather than cosmetics, or buses
rather than cars for the elite.
My Government is not prepared to give up our national endeavour to provide primary education for every child, basic medicines and some clean water for all our people. Cuts may have to be made in our national expenditure, but we will decide whether they fall on public services or private expenditure. Nor are we prepared to deal with inflation and shortages by relying only on monetary policy regardless of its relative effect on the poorest and less poor.
Our price control machinery may not be the most effective in the world, but we will not abandon price control; we will only strive to make it more efficient. And above all, we shall continue with our endeavours to build a socialist society.
When an international institution refuses us access to the international credit at its disposal except on condition that we surrender to it our policy determination, then we make no application for that credit. The choice is theirs-and ours.
But such conditions do reinforce our conviction about the importance of the Third World demand for changes in the management structure of the IMF. It needs to be made really international, and really an instrument of all its members, rather than a device by which powerful economic forces in some rich countries increase their power over the poor nations of the world.
There was a time when a number of people were urging that all aid to the Third World countries should be channeled through international institutions. They honestly believed that such institutions would be politically and ideologically neutral. I do not know whether there are now people who honestly believe
that the IMF is politically or ideologically neutral. It has an ideology of economic and social development which it is trying to impose on poor countries irrespective of their own clearly stated policies. And when we reject IMF conditions we hear the threatening whisper.
'Without accepting our conditions you will not get our money, and you will get no other money'. Indeed we have already heard hints from some quarters that money or credit will not be made available to us until we have reached an understanding with the IMF.
When did the IMF become an International Ministry of Finance? When did nations agree to surrender to it their power of decision making?
Your Excellencies: It is this growing power of the IMF and the irresponsible and arrogant way in which it is being wielded against the Poor that has forced me to use my opportunity to make these unusual remarks in a New Year Speech to you. The problems of my country and other Third World countries are grave enough without the political interference of IMF officials. If they cannot help at the very least they should stop meddling.
I have made it repeatedly clear to my own countrymen, however, that whatever decisions are made by us, and by our friends, 1980 is going to be a very difficult year for Tanzania. I believe that when they understand the problem our people will respond to this economic challenge as they have responded to other challenges in the past.
I believe they will bear the further sacrifices, and further burdens, which present conditions impose upon us just as long as they are assured that we are doing our best to share the burdens equitably, and continuing to pursue our own policies."
