Bunge-Lenye-Meno-A-Parliament-with-Teeth-for-Tanzania-LAXNNAJ547

A Parliament with Teeth, for Tanzania
More people pay income tax in Dar es Salaam, but that is not the centre
of our economy. In the mining sector, for example, companies have not
paid tax. In 1996, the value of gold exported from Tanzania was less
than US$2 million. By 2007, gold exports were worth US$87.5m, but
the gold companies still had not paid any corporation tax. This caused
uproar in parliament and the issue of mining contracts became highly
personalised. Maybe some of the ministers have contracts with the
mining companies.
We also found the government failed to keep proper records. The PAC
investigated sales of government houses, for example, but the
book-keeping was not good. The issue of record-keeping and the
reconciliation of financial statements is important, especially for
Tanzania’s international debt accounts.
Personal risks
When we interfere with these things, obviously there could be personal
risks. People don’t want to be challenged. More transparency means
less flexibility for the government. We don’t have enough members
from the opposition, who in my opinion have a better chance of holding
government to account than the people in the ruling party.
The more transparent a process becomes, the more people will want to
sabotage it. The politics is not very clear in these conflicts: the people
who want to sabotage our work may also want to protect a party, while
people who want to support this process may consider it gives an
advantage to the opposition. To me, the best policy is to be consistent.
We will stay on course. The PAC is demanding accountability, and
people should know that whoever is in a government position will be
held to account. This is the key point.
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