Tanzania to get Sh1.8 trillion from World Bank for crucial projects

Dar es Salaam. Tanzania will get an additional $775 million (approximately Sh1.8 trillion) from the World Bank, which has authorised the funding for economic recovery and healthcare improvements.

The new International Development Association (IDA) financing consists of a $500 million credit for the first Tanzania Inclusive and Resilient Growth Development Policy Financing and a $250 million credit plus a $25 million grant for the Tanzania Maternal and Child Health Investment Programme.

Tanzania’s tourism industry has shrunk, and import prices for petrol and other necessities have risen as a result of the Covid-19 outbreak and the crisis in Ukraine.

Prudent macroeconomic management has enabled the nation to withstand these external shocks while minimising the erosion of hard-won development achievements, according to a statement from the World Bank.

The Tanzania Inclusive and Resilient Growth Development Policy Financing is the first in a series of two operations to support policy and institutional reforms that are critical to unleashing private sector growth, increasing transparency, boosting Tanzania’s risk management capacity, and building economic resilience against future shocks driven by climate change and other external factors.

“The World Bank is putting its full support behind policies aimed at ensuring a robust private sector-led recovery that will help the country reach its economic potential, while also making growth more inclusive and resilient to future shocks,” said the World Bank country director for Tanzania, Mr Nathan Belete.

The second financing package of $275 million for the Tanzania Maternal and Child Health Investment Programme will help the country to improve the quality of essential healthcare services and scale up delivery.

It includes a $250 million Programme for Results (PforR) for Tanzania mainland and a $25 million Investment Project Financing (IPF) project for Zanzibar.

The programme is additionally funded by a grant of $25 million from the Global Financing Facility for Women, Children and Adolescents. The primary beneficiaries of this financing are women of reproductive age, adolescents, and children under the age of five, including newborns and infants (about 40 percent of the total population) who will benefit from a package of high impact quality and cost-effective reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, adolescent health, and nutrition (RMNCAH-N) interventions. “Over the past two decades, Tanzania has significantly reduced the disease burden and improved health outcomes due to improvements in the control of major communicable diseases and vaccine preventable diseases,” said Amit Dar, the World Bank regional director for strategy and operations.

“With this new financing, we hope to accelerate progress in areas where outcomes have been lagging in regard to the high maternal mortality, high fertility rate, the elevated newborn mortality and high rate of malnutrition,” he said.

Last week, the World Bank’s IDA approved $300 million credit and a $4.9 million grant for supporting water and sanitation as well as energy programmes.