Advertisement

Tanzania records increase in exports

Tuesday April 23 2019
D1

Tanzania’s exports of goods and services increased by more than $100 million in February compared to January. PHOTO | FILE | NMG

By DOROTHY NDALU

Tanzania’s exports of goods and services increased to $890 million in February from $698.6 million in the month January, according to the Bank of Tanzania’s monthly economic review for March.

The BoT’s review attributed the increase to a good performance in goods exports, particularly gold.

BoT said exports of goods and services increased to $855 million in the period ending February 2019, from $843 million in the corresponding period last year, owing to a good performance recorded in non-traditional exports and service receipts. It added that the value of traditional goods exports increased to $70.4 million in February from $38.4 million in January with cotton and tobacco recording the highest growths.

According to the review, the value of coffee and tea exports increased due to an increase in volume, while that of other traditional goods exports was on account of both volume and unit prices in the global market. The price movements of traditional exports were broadly consistent with the developments in world markets prices, according to the BoT’s review.

Meanwhile, on an annual basis the value of traditional goods exports decreased to $601.8 million in February 2019 from $1077.8 million in February 2018.

Non-traditional exports increased to $438.0million from $270.8 million in January this year. Significant performance was registered in manufactured goods and gold exports.

Advertisement

The good performance of gold exports, which accounts for about 52 per cent of total non-traditional exports, was explained by increases in volume and world market prices.

The report shows that the annual export value of non-traditional exports increased to $3,471.2 million in the period ending February 2019 up from $309 million in February 2018, driven by manufacturing, gold, re-exports and other exports.

However, exports of gold in 2019 has increased to $168 million compared with last year’s $151 million.

Advertisement