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Public servants not changing with investment mindset
2008-01-18 09:11:09
By Mwandoshah Mfanga
Investment that is meaningful to any country or individual`s development must be of two kinds. It must involve the public or society on one hand and the individual on the other.
This is the reality of any country and the proven experience of history.
Societal or collective investment means all projects that translate into the services and production of goods that have an eventual effect on the development of the society, nation, public, country or the collectivity.
Individual projects, on the other hand, mean all kinds of projects that are initiated and operated by individuals and are eventually meant to benefit the people behind their establishment and their related kin and kith.
In a real meaningful developed investment, the two aspects must go or grow together in a balanced manner, particularly in a capitalist society and must complement each other if the society is to be categorised as a developed one.
This is different from a socialist country where the reality of the collectivity takes precedence over that of individualism.
Countries that are considered developed differ from those that are not developed in that both kinds of investments are not developed.
In this age of neo-liberal reforms, which came immediately after the receding or what others may call the failure of the socialist and communist systems, there has been a great tendency for investments set up to hinge on projects that most likely satisfy the ids of individuals first rather than those of the society.
There are clear reasons in this. First is that most governments have decided to remain with administration, and quite aloof from most economic investments, as a result of World Bank and International Monetary Fund advice, which came up with the idea that governments should quit venturing in production and instead let individuals do the job.
Even in projects that are of public nature, there is what investors call Public-Private Partnership (3Ps) or (PPP), whereby projects that initially were carried out by the State are now being carried out together by the State and individual investors.
In the case of Tanzania where the State highly commanded production, it has been an all out sale of projects-some of them to foreigners-in a manner that was not well studies before the carrying out of the exercise.
The exercise, which invited much criticism from the public, as such has been indiscriminate and with little regard to the high interests of the nation.
While States such as China, Russia, Singapore, Israel and United Arab Emirates have embarked on what is called State capitalism-the setting up of State firms locally that undertake international operations abroad, Tanzania has actually done the opposite.
It sold some of the state owned firms, which would have aided her to operate outside the country to foreigners.
The neighbouring Kenya, which has a big stake in the Tanzanian economy, shows how it did it the right way; while Tanzania did it the opposite way.
Kenya adopted a capitalist system at independence, while Tanzania took the socialist path. Both managed to establish a number of post-independence investments.
With the setting in of neo-liberal economics, the former has been able to establish scores of companies in the latter (in fact it is number two after Britain in terms of investments in Tanzania), while Tanzania virtually has nothing in the Kenyan economy.
Some of these companies like Kenya Commercial Bank, Kenya Airways, etc are public firms.
One could say, it would have probably been proper if Tanzania also had the National Bank of Commerce and Air Tanzania Limited operating in Kenya as well.
But what was done in the divestiture programme was to dwarf even the little investment turf or any stronghold that existed in the local economy.
This means that in terms of state or collective investment, Tanzania is less developed than Kenya internationally, though the former adopted a collective strategy at independence in order to quicken the development of the sector while the latter chose the other way round.
Do not talk of the development of the infrastructures like roads, railways, airways and waterways, which by their nature are largely public and not private projects, and which appear to be doing well in the former than in the latter.
How come that Tanzania`s seven gold mines located in the Lake Zone use Kenya`s roads and railway for the transporting of bulky goods because of the underdeveloped road and railway stretches from Dar es Salaam to Mwanza?
This clearly shows that there is something wrong in the Tanzania`s investment strategic policies.
Tanzania`s investment development policies are very lopsided in that they are not balanced, particularly after dropping the Ujamaa path in that emphasis on developing what is public and the related projects are given less emphasis than that of pushing forward projects that relate to individuals.
This is dangerous to the economy because the nation as a country will have little space to spur to progress.
What is even much more dangerous is that even some government officials have also changed their mindset-from the one where they imposed cumbersome procedures and the like to potential investors to one where they are keen to receive investments (but there is an increasing tendency by individual servants to look for investments that they see have some personal gain than those that could benefit the entire society).
This is another dangerous disease that the government is suffering from.
Thought the government in the 1990s gave green light to public servants and government leaders to invest and amass wealth, the product of this benevolent policy is what the nation is reaping at the moment.
They now invest for their personal ends and because they are afraid that once they invest in projects that are of public nature they might be confiscated by the government in case anything went wrong-the tendency has been to hide, more in individual gains or oriented projects.
Some of the country\'s neo-liberal investment policies, like that of allowing public servants and public leaders to moonlight are as such not conducive to the development of the economy and as such they are doing more harm than good to it and the nation and should therefore be ceased forthwith.
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