Posted on July, 1, 2019 at 09:58 am
THE National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has released the 2017-18 Household Budget Survey (HBS), which indicates that food poverty among Tanzanians has decreased from 10 per cent in 2011/12 to a single- digit of 8per cent.
According to Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa, a decrease in food poverty was a result of the fifth phase government’s provision of social services, including education, water, health services and infrastructure, among others.
Mr Majaliwa was speaking during the launch of key findings of the survey, which coincided with the launch of the new building of NBS, Takwimu House.
According to Mr Majaliwa, the country is equally happy that the inflation rate had continued remaining in a single-digit of 3.2 as of April 2019.
Mr Majaliwa said the country’s food security remained at 124 per cent, which showed that in the 2019/20 season there would be enough food in the country.
“The government will continue improving agriculture, livestock and fisheries sectors because these are the sectors that contribute to the availability of food by 100 per cent,’’ he noted.
Presenting key survey findings, the chief government statistician, who is NBS Director General, Dr Albina Chuwa, said Tanzania was among a few countries in the world that had reduced food poverty to the single-digit.
Dr Chuwa said since President John Magufuli took power in 2015, poverty in the country had decreased to 26.4 per cent from 28 per cent.
“The findings also show that the state of poverty to people living in rural areas has gone down by 3.1per cent between 2011/12 and 2017/2018,’’ she noted, adding that Dar es Salaam Region had the lowest poverty rate of 8.0 per cent.
According to her, the survey further collected data on the indicators of availability of clean and safe water, electricity and the status of latrines at household level, among others.
The findings, she said, found out that 93 per cent of all households in the Mainland Tanzania had toilets, something she described as the greatest achievement in sanitation.
On financial inclusion, the survey reveals that 12.3 per cent of Tanzanians at least in each household have a bank account, but the chief government statistician said the number was still small considering that the financial sector was important in reducing poverty especially
through acquiring loans from those institutions.
Speaking on the occasion, Deputy Minister for Finance and Planning, Dr Ashatu Kijaji, asked all Tanzanians to work hard so that they could liberate themselves from poverty.
“The findings today show all important poverty and non-poverty indicators on the roadmap towards reducing poverty in the country and my ministry, in collaboration with the World Bank, is preparing a comprehensive report of this survey that will be released in December,’’
she said.
Source: Daily News