COVID-19 Pandemic combat by the Government Expenditure

JAMES MATHEW MGAYA – Art in Tanzania internship

Disaster Management

Medical and Public Health

Other African countries have prioritised the pandemic and the accompanying lockdown measures that have worsened the severe food insecurity problem, increasing the population of people living in extreme poverty. At the same time, Tanzania has opted for a different approach. Although Tanzania’s unconventional approach to COVID-19 may be slow in response and seem to lack direction, its uniqueness highlights the need for the government to develop context-specific, innovative containment strategies and recovery plans. The Tanzgovernment’sent’s expenditure was to maintain multiple competing priorities, so far the government did not ignore the pandemic by increase public health fundTanzania’snia’s interest was to contain the transmission of the virus along all its borders, coordinate closely with its partners, maintain diplomatic relationships, ensure trade is not severely disrupted, and invest in formal small-holder farmers to produce for the domestic economy.

How did it work?

Tanzania used its government expenditure to refocus on financial services, which made it among 14 African countries that did not introduce any social safety measures, such as cash transfers. Instead, the government focused on responding with economic measures through the Bank of Tanzania, implementing various policies to ease liquidity and safeguard the stability of the financial sector. The bank reduced the discount rate, lowered the minimum reserve requirements ratio, incentivised the restructuring of loans for severely affected borrowers, and relaxed limits on mobile money use.

Tanzanian government’s expenditure focused on increasing its capacity to manage the virus while pursuing sustainable economic development. In other words, Tanzania can learn to adapt to and live with the virus in a way that is not detrimental to the economy, but also does not overwhelm the health system. They fund health centres and witness the COVID-19 emergency facilities. The government also established special COVID-19 health centres to combat the pandemic and increased public health funding for local health centres to implement mass testing, enforce social distancing, and sanitation measures.

Tanzanian government expenditure utilises the Strategic Cities Project’s development objectives to facilitate the Additional Financing (AF), which enhances the development impact and sustainability of investments financed by the original project by investing in equipment and operational and maintenance capacity for existing infrastructure, as well as deepening local government capacity for urban management. These initiatives enable the government to maintain multiple competing priorities, manage the transmission rate while ensuring food security, and create and protect jobs. 

Conclusion

The COVID-19 pandemic will have short-, medium-—and long-term effects on territorial development and sub-national government functioning and finance. One risk is that many governments focus only on the short term. However, the Tanzanian government’s expenditure on longer-term priorities must be included in the immediate response measures to boost the resilience of regional socio-economic systems. Much of the Tanzanian government’s effort was redirected towards the economy’s growth during the pandemic, so substantial public investment and export earnings drove government expenditure. During this pandemic, the government’s focus and commitment have been to avoid a complete halt of economic activities. 

Resources

The International Growth Centre – COVID-19 in Tanzania: Is a business-as-usual response enough?