Tanzania Ranked Third On List of Highest Wage Inequality

Arnold mrass cannambo

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Apr 13, 2018
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allafrica.com

Nov 30, 2018 2:23 PM

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Dar Es Salaam Tanzania.

Dar es Salaam — Tanzania has been ranked third among 64 surveyed countries in the world with the highest level of wage inequality after scoring high in Gini estimates.

Gini measures the extent to which the distribution of income or, in some cases, consumption expenditure among individuals or households within an economy deviates from a perfectly equal distribution.

The Global Wage Report 2018/19 published this week by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) shows that Tanzania scored 53.6 Gini estimates of wage inequality, higher than the global average of 35.5. Wages inequality in Tanzania has grown over the years. In 2011 the Gini was lower at 37.80.

Women are even more affected in this inequality. They are paid 20 per cent of what male employees are paid. However, the Tanzania score is higher than an average of 47.3 for low income countries for 2018/19 edition.

The report shows that South Africa was on top of the list among featured 64 countries, after scoring 63.9 followed by Namibia which had a Gini estimated of wage inequality of 62.

The data on wages inequality were collected from 64 countries which, together, reflect the wage distribution from some 75 percent of the world's wage employees.

Some 84 per cent of employees in Africa are covered in the 2018/19 edition of the Global Wage Report, representing approximately 91 per cent of the continent's total wage bill.

'There are huge wage differences among Tanzania's private sector employees as most employers recruit people without considering skills, education and experiences," said a University of Dar es Salaam don Prof Haji Semboja in a telephone interview yesterday commenting on the report.

Semboja mentioned another factor that contributes to wages inequality as tax regime. He said there was no mechanism to differentiate tax rates among highly paid and lowly paid workers. He said there were many casual workers in the manufacturing sector, and denies them being paid living wages. Prof Humphrey Moshi , who is the Chairman of Fair Competition Commission (FCC) says people who benefit from strong economic growth are few.

"This indicates that sectors which employ many people have little contribution to the economic growth. The sectors include mining, which is capital intensive and agriculture which employs more than half of the population but its growth is less than five percent, which is bad economically," Professor Moshi said.

He said Tanzania will to return to the lowest Gini coefficient experienced in 2011 if more efforts are made to develop agriculture.
 
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