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TIC reputation intact - Ole Naiko
2007-12-26 09:55:42
By Patrick Kisembo
Tanzania Investment Centre Executive Director Emmanuel Ole Naiko has defended the organisation in the face of allegations that it has lost its international standing despite scooping the 2007 world`s best Investment Promotion Agency (IPA) award.
In an exclusive interview with The Guardian yesterday, the TIC chief said the fears were unfounded.
Two latest reports, the 2007 Africa Competitiveness Report and the 2007 Index of Economic Freedom say Tanzania lags behind Kenya in specified investment ratings.
In March, TIC was named as the World’s Best IPA of the year 2007 after receiving the honour from the World Association of Investment Promotion Agencies (WAIPA) during the WAIPA World Investment Conference that took place in Geneva, Switzerland.
Asked why Tanzania had ranked lower than several other countries in the African Competitiveness Report, Ole Naiko said: “The public should not be confused by these reports because their criteria are completely different from those of IPA.”
“TIC has not lost its reputation as the best IPA. We are still the best in this area. The only thing is that competitiveness reports and index are carried out by big institutions like the World Bank, the African Development Bank, and others with the criteria that touches governments directly,” he said.
He said while the African Competitive Report was compiled jointly by the World Bank, World Economic Forum and Africa Development Bank in 2006/2007, the IPA award was organized by the World Association of Investment Promotion Agencies (WAIPA) and the award was given at the World Investment Conference.
WAIPA falls under the auspices of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), which evaluates IPAs along special annual themes.
``Like this year, we did better due to our effectiveness in having one-stop-shop facilitative services, successfully attracting international and local investors, plus the roundtable meetings attended by the President, which are jointly organized by the Tanzania National Business Council and National Investment Steering Committee, which deals with investment of cross cutting nature chaired by the Prime Minister,`` he said.
Ole Naiko said the IPA issue was completely different from the 2007 Africa Competitive Report, which gave a detailed analysis and findings of a global competitiveness index and country balance sheet competitiveness index details derived out of 128 economies.
According to the Global Competitiveness Index, Tanzania ranks 108th out of 128, Kenya ranks 97th while Uganda ranks 116th.
The TIC boss said the competitiveness index of 128 economies dealt with matters like favouritism by government officers, burden of government regulations, business cost due to violence, crime and reliability of the police.
Other criteria were overall infrastructure, including the quality of railways and roads. Additional areas of interest were inflation and interest rates.
Ole Naiko said the pillars checked included market efficiency, things like the extent and effect of taxation, and time required to start business.
He said the other thing that differentiated the IPA and the mentioned reports, especially the Economic Freedom Report, were the link between economic opportunity and prosperity.
The report was released in 2007 and published by Heritage Foundation of Washington DC and the Wall Street Journal of New York City.
According to the report, Tanzania ranked 103rd in the 2007 index of Economic Freedom behind Kenya which ranked 82th and Uganda 59th out of 157 countries in the world.
Ole Naiko said the report had attempted to develop systematic empirical measurements of economic freedom in countries scattered throughout the world, taking into consideration ten factors of economic freedom.
These include economic freedom, business freedom, trade freedom, fiscal freedom, freedom for currency, monetary freedom, investment freedom, financial freedom and property rights score.
“With this 2007 index of economic freedom, Tanzania was ranked 103rd, giving us a message that we still have some work to do,” said Ole Naiko.
He, however, admitted that Kenya was a step ahead in matters dealt with by the competitive reports, which was a sign for Tanzania to improve in order to have a good image in the investment sector.
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