Posted on October, 17, 2017 at 11:01 am
BRICS countries have replaced United Kingdom and the European Union as Tanzania’s main trading partners, dominating the country’s import and export trade, according to latest
Bank of Tanzania report. China, India and South Africa are the main import and export partners while Brazil and Russia were still low. BRICS stands for initial of the said countries. The Bank of Tanzania (BoT) quarterly report for second quarter of this year shows that for 2016 exports to India leads at 1.53tri/- followed by South Africa 1.37tri/- and China 770.94bn/-.
For Russia and Brazil exports where nil in 2016. However, looking at the data, exports to BRICS countries slowed down excepts South Africa that went up slightly from 1.33tri/- in 2015 to 1.37tri/- in 2016. China exports took a nosedive from 1.11tri/- to 770.94bn/- while for India sank from 2.27tri/- to 1.53tri/-.
The country’s export to Russia also went down from 23.08bn/- to nil last year. On imports, BRICS member states were leading source of imports for Tanzania in 2016. The group was led by China 3.56tri/- followed by India with 3.11tri/-, South Africa 1.02tri/-, Russia 233.97bn/- and Brazil 60.62bn/-.
The imports, unlike export, showed a mix trend where China dropped from 3.7tri/- in 2015 to 3.56tri/-in 2016 and Russia sank from 245.85bn/- to 233.77bn/- while India increased from 2.51tri/- to 3.11tri/-, and South Africa almost remained at the same level. However, the country’s imports from Brazil almost doubled from 33.93bn/- to 60.62bn/-.
Imports from United Arab Emirates (UAE) challenges BRICS dominance after registering 1.28tri/- in 2016, though lower compared to 1.67tri/- in 2015. On exports Switzerland challenged the BRICS after its volume went up five times from 304.64bn/- in 2015 to 1.67tri/- in 2016.
Overall total exports declined to 10.319tri/- in 2016 from 11.46tri/- in 2015 and imports went down to 17.14tri/- from 21.44tri/-.
BoT said the decline might be the results of the decreasing of oil due to increase in usage of natural gas and capital goods.
“Capital goods import declined partly due to the completion of major projects and exploration activities.
Source: Daily News