Sammuel999
JF-Expert Member
- Jun 1, 2016
- 3,481
- 2,346
A president who looks good but governs
impulsively
May 28th 2016 | DAR ES SALAAM
WHEN opening parliament after his election
last year, Tanzania’s president, John
Magufuli, repeated a campaign promise:
parents would no longer have to pay for
secondary education. “And when I say free
education, I indeed mean free,” he assured
MPs. This year the government started
expelling foreign workers without proper
permits, including thousands of Kenyan
teachers. Schools that were already straining
to cope with a huge influx of new pupils are
now at breaking point.
The president, nicknamed “the Bulldozer”,
has delighted Tanzanians with an anti-
corruption drive and public displays of
austerity. Within weeks of taking office last
November he had banned all but the most
urgent foreign travel for government officials.
He spent Tanzania’s Independence Day
picking up litter by hand. He has fired
officials suspected of incompetence or
dishonesty and purged 10,000 “ghost
workers” from the public payroll. However, he
has a worrying tendency not to think things
through.
Advertisement
Take, for example, his efforts to extract more
tax from people using the port at Dar es
Salaam, a gateway for the region. He has
enforced VAT on the costs of moving goods
that arrive at the port overland to
neighbouring countries such as Zambia and
Malawi. Shipping firms have immediately
switched routes and now unload in Kenya,
Mozambique or South Africa, leaving a once
bustling harbour almost empty. /cOLOR]
Mr Magufuli remains popular with ordinary
Tanzanians. Twitter users at
#WhatWouldMagufuliDo celebrate his
thriftiness by suggesting amusing things he
might approve of, such as wearing a curtain
instead of buying new clothes and heating
showers with a candle. The president has
mended fences with neighbours, too. In April
Uganda decided that a $4 billion oil pipeline
would go through Tanzania, scrapping a
previous agreement with Kenya. A month
later Rwanda decided to build a railway to
Dar es Salaam instead of the Kenyan port of
Mombasa.
However, some Tanzanians, especially
businessfolk, are having doubts about Mr
Magufuli’s flair for the dramatic. When he
thinks a public official has misbehaved he
fires him on the spot, rather than following
due process. More important is that he
shows little interest in wider reforms aimed
at spurring economic growth. If anything he
seems to be making it tougher to invest in a
country that already scores dismally on the
World Bank’s ease of doing business index,
where it is ranked 139th out of 189. “What
Africa needs is strong institutions, not
strong men or women,” says Zitto Kabwe, an
opposition leader.
Surprisingly Tanzania even makes it hard for
honest companies to pay their taxes (there it
ranks 150th). Little wonder many less
scrupulous ones don’t bother: last year fewer
than 500 companies contributed an
astonishing 43% of government revenues.
Many others paid nothing.
Instead of addressing these deeper structural
issues Mr Magufuli has continued to live up
to his nickname of “Bulldozer”: one foreign
firm was given seven days to settle a $5m
bill, says its boss. The country’s revenue
authority then took the money directly from
its bank account. By contrast, the
government is painfully slow to pay its own
bills: it still owes the same company $30m.
Acacia Mining, a gold producer, is owed
$98m in VAT rebates—effectively an interest-
free loan to the government. “The country
has become totally uninvestable,” says a
bigwig at a private-equity firm with holdings
across Africa. “You pay your taxes for five
years and have the returns to prove it and
then some guy arrives with his own
calculation and says you haven’t paid your
tax.”
Mr Magufuli’s zeal may be admired, but his
party, which has ruled Tanzania since
independence, is thuggish and undemocratic:
it suppressed dissent during the elections
last year and then cancelled a vote held in
Zanzibar after the opposition probably won
it. Frustrated, America suspended $472m of
aid. The Bulldozer merely harrumphed that
Tanzania would soon no longer need aid and
told the revenue authority to squeeze even
harder.
My take
geza The economist is really good
www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21699470-president-who-looks-good-governs-impulsively-government-gesture
nomasana, sam999, NairobiWalker, hbuyosh, msemakweli, simplemind, Kimweri, Bulldog, MK254, Kafrican, Ngongo, Ab_Titchaz, mtanganyika mpya, JokaKuu, Ngongo, Askari Kanzu, Dhuks, Yule-Msee, waltham, Mzee, mombasite gabriel, Juakali1980 , Boda254, mwaswast, MwendaOmo, Mwanakijiji, Iconoclastes, oneflash, Kambalanick, 1 Africa, saadeque, burukenge, nyangau mkenya, Teen-Upperhill Nairobi, kadoda11[/QUOTE]
impulsively
May 28th 2016 | DAR ES SALAAM
WHEN opening parliament after his election
last year, Tanzania’s president, John
Magufuli, repeated a campaign promise:
parents would no longer have to pay for
secondary education. “And when I say free
education, I indeed mean free,” he assured
MPs. This year the government started
expelling foreign workers without proper
permits, including thousands of Kenyan
teachers. Schools that were already straining
to cope with a huge influx of new pupils are
now at breaking point.
The president, nicknamed “the Bulldozer”,
has delighted Tanzanians with an anti-
corruption drive and public displays of
austerity. Within weeks of taking office last
November he had banned all but the most
urgent foreign travel for government officials.
He spent Tanzania’s Independence Day
picking up litter by hand. He has fired
officials suspected of incompetence or
dishonesty and purged 10,000 “ghost
workers” from the public payroll. However, he
has a worrying tendency not to think things
through.
Advertisement
Take, for example, his efforts to extract more
tax from people using the port at Dar es
Salaam, a gateway for the region. He has
enforced VAT on the costs of moving goods
that arrive at the port overland to
neighbouring countries such as Zambia and
Malawi. Shipping firms have immediately
switched routes and now unload in Kenya,
Mozambique or South Africa, leaving a once
bustling harbour almost empty. /cOLOR]
Mr Magufuli remains popular with ordinary
Tanzanians. Twitter users at
#WhatWouldMagufuliDo celebrate his
thriftiness by suggesting amusing things he
might approve of, such as wearing a curtain
instead of buying new clothes and heating
showers with a candle. The president has
mended fences with neighbours, too. In April
Uganda decided that a $4 billion oil pipeline
would go through Tanzania, scrapping a
previous agreement with Kenya. A month
later Rwanda decided to build a railway to
Dar es Salaam instead of the Kenyan port of
Mombasa.
However, some Tanzanians, especially
businessfolk, are having doubts about Mr
Magufuli’s flair for the dramatic. When he
thinks a public official has misbehaved he
fires him on the spot, rather than following
due process. More important is that he
shows little interest in wider reforms aimed
at spurring economic growth. If anything he
seems to be making it tougher to invest in a
country that already scores dismally on the
World Bank’s ease of doing business index,
where it is ranked 139th out of 189. “What
Africa needs is strong institutions, not
strong men or women,” says Zitto Kabwe, an
opposition leader.
Surprisingly Tanzania even makes it hard for
honest companies to pay their taxes (there it
ranks 150th). Little wonder many less
scrupulous ones don’t bother: last year fewer
than 500 companies contributed an
astonishing 43% of government revenues.
Many others paid nothing.
Instead of addressing these deeper structural
issues Mr Magufuli has continued to live up
to his nickname of “Bulldozer”: one foreign
firm was given seven days to settle a $5m
bill, says its boss. The country’s revenue
authority then took the money directly from
its bank account. By contrast, the
government is painfully slow to pay its own
bills: it still owes the same company $30m.
Acacia Mining, a gold producer, is owed
$98m in VAT rebates—effectively an interest-
free loan to the government. “The country
has become totally uninvestable,” says a
bigwig at a private-equity firm with holdings
across Africa. “You pay your taxes for five
years and have the returns to prove it and
then some guy arrives with his own
calculation and says you haven’t paid your
tax.”
Mr Magufuli’s zeal may be admired, but his
party, which has ruled Tanzania since
independence, is thuggish and undemocratic:
it suppressed dissent during the elections
last year and then cancelled a vote held in
Zanzibar after the opposition probably won
it. Frustrated, America suspended $472m of
aid. The Bulldozer merely harrumphed that
Tanzania would soon no longer need aid and
told the revenue authority to squeeze even
harder.
My take
geza The economist is really good
www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21699470-president-who-looks-good-governs-impulsively-government-gesture
nomasana, sam999, NairobiWalker, hbuyosh, msemakweli, simplemind, Kimweri, Bulldog, MK254, Kafrican, Ngongo, Ab_Titchaz, mtanganyika mpya, JokaKuu, Ngongo, Askari Kanzu, Dhuks, Yule-Msee, waltham, Mzee, mombasite gabriel, Juakali1980 , Boda254, mwaswast, MwendaOmo, Mwanakijiji, Iconoclastes, oneflash, Kambalanick, 1 Africa, saadeque, burukenge, nyangau mkenya, Teen-Upperhill Nairobi, kadoda11[/QUOTE]
