The ongoing global financial crisis may continue to deeply haunt Tanzania and other African countries south of the Sahara for a long time despite the already evident green shoots in Asia and Europe.
The world's top policymakers offered their most upbeat assessment of the global economy in months, saying it was stabilising and that it could start growing again as soon as late this year.
Australia's central bank governor Glenn Stevens joined the growing chorus of officials predicting that the economy should start pulling out of its worst recession in more than six decades later this year.
"Developments over recent months are certainly consistent with the view that a recovery will get under way towards the end of the year," Mr Stevens said in a speech.
His comments follow World Bank President Robert Zoellick's assessment that the global downturn was abating and growth could resume this year or next, and surprisingly optimistic remarks from European Central Bank Vice-President Lucas Papademos.
Recently, Mr Zoellick highlighted the high degree of certainty about the world economy's future, while Mr Papademos' take on the euro zone's prospects was more upbeat than the ECB's base scenario of recovery only taking hold next year.
The assessments seem to leave Sub Saharan African countries out of the picture in a report published mid May by Regional Head of Research at Standard Chartered Global Focus, Razia Khan, who says it is difficult to estimate overall African growth in the current environment because of the characteristics specific to this down turn.
She says, the repeated downgrades to Sub Saharan African growth forecasts underscores the region's vulnerability to the global crisis and increasingly, though the question is not just how deeply Africa will be impacted by the crisis, but also for how long.
Ms Khan continues to elaborate that although there have been signs of recovery for commodity prices in Asia, of which Sub Saharan Africa is largely dependant on its exports, a quick bounce-back might not be anticipated due to financing constraints faced by Sub Saharan economies.
She says, commodity prices accounting for an average of 45 percent of the GDP in the region are already staging a recovery from earlier lows following the apparent green shoots of recovery evident in Asia although a quick return to the previous growth rates of 6-7 percent may not be the most plausible scenario in Sub Saharan Africa economies.
"For Africa, it is not only the traditional commodity price channel affecting export earnings, fiscal balances and Foreign Direct Investments that matters.
The nature of the financial crisis and any drying up of external financing available to Africa, also risk prolonging the downturn, if the downturn were due solely to commodity prices, a relative quick bounce-back in African growth might be anticipated, "she says.
In her document, Ms Khan says that relative to other developing regions, Sub Saharan Africa has fewer financial linkages with the rest of the world. According to statistics released by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), Sub Saharan Africa receives less than three percent of total cross-border lending to developing regions.
She, however insists that these statistics contradict the regions vulnerability on the ground that the region, during the second quarter to the fourth quarter of 2008 had witnessed the sharpest percentage contraction in cross border lending to any region due to high risk in the region which prompted a speedy process of de-leveraging and repatriation by many non traditional players in the region.
These are the ones who were once attracted to Africa by rising capital flows during the years of good global economic growth, easy availability of liquidity, and high levels of risk appetite.
The scenario applied as much to bank lending as it did to portfolio investment.
Elsewhere in Africa, the document says, the evidence is more mixed. While Zambia, Ghana and Uganda reduced their borrowing from foreign banks in fourth quarter of 2008, anecdotal evidence suggests that the situation may have started to reverse, with developments related to the resource wealth of these countries being a key swing factor. However, this is unlikely to make an immediate difference to growth.
"In Kenya, the revival of cross-border borrowing is likely to have been dramatic. Yet this is partly on the strength of borrowing by state owned companies, which threatens to crowd out other lending including SMEs which could provide a more immediate boost to domestic spending amid the downturn," says Khan.
In her findings she says Kenya provides an interesting illustration of the hurdles facing African economies. With liquidity from financial institutions more difficult to obtain, Africa will increasingly have to seek out home-grown solutions to fill the gap.
Echoing these remarks, is the National Micro Finance Annual Report 2008, which says Tanzanian export of goods and services account for 16 percent of GDP, while imports account for 29 percent.
The short fall in international income is almost 13 percent of GDP and is largely paid for by credit, investment and specifically development aid flows from development partners.
"Given the severity of the economic crisis in US and Europe, there is a risk that these financial inflows may not be maintained over the coming years.
To ensure high public expenditure levels for critical social services, higher domestic revenues will be necessary. Only a vibrant private sector will be able to create the required economic growth," says the report.
In order to reduce export dependency on a limited range of cash crops such as cotton, coffee, tea and cashew nuts, efforts are underway to expand into more upmarket agricultural products.
According to the NMB report, the government has also stimulated the non-agricultural sectors of mining and tourism. Tanzania now depends on gold for almost 50 percent of its export revenues.
In her paper, Khan, though doubtful believes that recent technological changes, including the rapid rise of mobile phone banking, may help to alter the picture by drawing the informal sectors into the formal economy, and bringing cash under the mattresses into the banking system, where it can be intermediated more effectively.
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