Structural Adjustment Programs (saps) in Tanzania

Tanzania is one of the poorest countries in the world in terms of per capita income, which its economy depends heavily on agriculture. Both the World Bank and IMF, and other donors have contributed funds to rehabilitate Tanzania's slow economic infrastructure and to ease poverty through Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs). Agriculture is still the most important part of Tanzania’s economy so improving agriculture was the only way to assist Tanzanians because the most population of Tanzania are living in the countryside where agriculture is taking place thus many Tanzanians could benefit much from SAPs program through improvement in agriculture (UKEssays, 2017).

There was one of the core plans of SAPs in 1985 was to rise up the output of food and export crops, which was possible by improving the market system for these crops and, also providing more incentives for production. Nevertheless, the state government failed to administered SAPs measures, following this, the IMF and World Bank withdraw from supporting the government and either other donor countries refused to give grants and loans, again the country accomplishment shows to decline in the following years in economic performance was owing to bad weather condition lead to the destruction of people's properties and crops as agriculture is one of the most important sectors of the national economy, it lead to the poor performance thus low gross domestic product, not only agriculture was affected but also other economic activities were terribly affected. In addition to improvement in agriculture imposed by the IMF and World Bank was to transform the country economy, which is change to free market economy together with privatization of public sector in Tanzania, privatization lead to many benefits including, recovery of dead industry increase national output of Tanzania experienced a lot of Economic problems as the country was coming from the war with Uganda. Generally, the world economy was falling down, trade liberalization was more likely an incentive to attract many external and internal investors to take into consideration and invest in Tanzania indeed the number of investors increased and the national output increased too, as well as trade liberalization lead to shifting of many trade barriers such price and market reforms, tariffs, embargoes, and custom duties.

Trade liberalization in SAPs was guiding Tanzania and other developing countries to the system of an open market where the forces of demand and supply are the only antecedent of price in the market, hence the government is not supposed to interfere in any problem. Last but not least, throughout SAPs economic recovery program that IMF and World Bank started among other measures to renovate and rebuild the Tanzanian infrastructure through rehabilitation of the remaining infrastructure in which were placed from the colonial government because there was need for improving these infrastructures as they were in bad conditions, including roads, railway, airports, and harbors. The main importance of infrastructure is for fostering the economic performance in the country together with making the country more accessible in all regions.

The purpose of SAPs was to make Tanzania changing its economies from a command economy to free market economy that is privatization in a place where private investors are increasingly investing in the country thus it could be recovered from the economic crisis, mostly infrastructure is one of the ingredients to foster of the national economy. These physical infrastructures were improved in the recent years, Tanzania transport network has developed significantly. Any part of Tanzania is now accessible without any matter that is the success of SAPs and the Government at large because SAPs, cannot be able to run itself. Apart from those possible advantages, SAPs through privatization of public entities to private sector lead the government’s loss little control of the national economy, which is the decision process about the price of goods and services are left in the hands of the forces of demand and supply in market mechanism to decide. One of the major weakness to leave the market to decide in which the government have no power to decide on economic productions, even to control monopolies and another market failure, in other words, it does not mean that the government have no control but not as much as it had during the past times within its sovereignty, this is evidence that Tanzania inflation is increasing every year the government have failed to control this inflation.

Therefore, as explained through many strategic plans of SAPs, it can be concluded that implementation through SAPs have brought much to the development in an internal economy where it is able to make the country recovering from economy ill. Moreover, physical infrastructures in Tanzania have also been rehabilitated under the efficient plan of SAPs. On the other hand, there was also negative impact during that phase, which was like a grey zone in term of sovereignty because the government has been lost total control in economy performances as well as removal of subsidies.