AS the country prepares for regional meeting on Financing for Development (FfD) to be held in Addis Ababa next month, Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) have urged the government to strengthen its engagement capacity in the Post 2015 Development Agenda by putting in place a strong team that would present country’s specific demands.
According to a press statement released by Tanzania Association of Non-Governmental Organizations (TANGO) in Dar es Salaam, the NGO pushes for sending sufficient number of negotiators and abandon laissez-faire which has been rendered to the engagement in global policy and decision-making processes.
“Still Tanzania and Tanzanians have specific country demands which have to be presented to the Addis meeting in specific terms,” read part of the statement which was signed by TANGO Policy Engagement and Advocacy Programme Manager, Mr Zaa Twalangeti.
He said the government should ensure that before the Addis meeting it puts in place a concrete plan of ensuring that the increased FDI which may result from positive donor response during the Addis meeting so that the money is to be effectively used to leverage the 30 per cent poor Tanzanians out of excruciating poverty.
“Further the CSOs urge the government to foster greater social responsibility from the service companies such as mobile phones and the mining ones,” said Mr Zwalangeti.
He pointed out that the CSOs urge the government to be genuine during Addis meeting’s negotiations and take the donors to task DPs regarding their promises made to financing the MDGs.
“The CSO also decried the failure by the DPs to honour their commitment made during the Montreal meeting,” said Mr Twalangeti.
He said while the global development actors promote stronger regional blocks, there is also need to find ways of mitigating the trade conditions imposed on such countries like those in the EAC by such agreements as the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with the European Union (EU).
“Therefore the CSOs urge the global finance policy makers to channel a part of the ODA to facilitate such regional blocks like EAC to increase competitiveness of their products in the global market,” said Mr Twalangeti.
He said while the CSOs cheer the government’s good intentions of extricating itself from donor dependence as is articulated in the Development cooperation Framework (DCF) for Tanzania of 2014, noting that the CSOs want URT to walk its words by expanding revenue collection.
“In regard to revenue collection CSOs urge URT to increase Parliamentary oversight over public,” said Mr Twalangeti.
He said another key element which the CSOs see as a solution to the challenge of greater revenue collection is to educate the general public about the benefits of tax collection, saying the public education should be coupled with greater public capacity building in such social accountability frameworks.
“They also wanted the Tanzanian government to do away with the tax waivers and manage the tax evasions,” said Mr Twalangeti.