East African Business Week (Kampala)
Mbonea Israel
6 December 2008
Dar Es Salaam — The volume of transactions conducted by the bureau de change system in Tanzania rose modestly to US$91.2 million.
This was partly due to increase in both sales and purchases. The latest Monthly Economic Review of the Bank of Tanzania (BoT) (August, 2008) shows that sales and purchases increased to $ 45.8 million and $45.4 million respectively.
The increase in sales was due to a rise in foreign exchange payment for education and medical purposes, while the increase in purchases emanated from the rise in foreign exchange receipts from exports and NGOs.
"The buying and selling rates appreciated slightly to TShs1,167 per US dollar and Tshs 1,204 per US dollar respectively," the report says. Meanwhile, Tanzania exported goods and services worth $3,968.4 million compared to $3,536.6 million recorded in the corresponding period a year earlier. As a share of total exports, travel and gold continued to dominate the export sector accounting for about 28% and 21% respectively.
Improvement was also recorded in transportation as receipts increased from $ 312.1 million to $ 358.4 million. This development is largely attributable to an increase in transit trade to neighbouring countries.
Transit goods increased from 2.3 million tons recorded in the previous year to 2.6 million this year.
Merchandise goods exports increased by 12 .8 per cent to $ 2,123.7million on account of improved performance in non-traditional exports as traditional exports recorded a slight decline to $ 286.1 million.
Gold continued to dominate accounting for about 37.4 per cent of total merchandise exports, followed by manufactured goods which accounted for about 17.6 per cent.
On world commodity prices, the BoT report shows the average prices for coffee, Robusta and Arabica recorded slight increases to $2.5 per kilogramme and $ 3.3 per kilogramme respectively.
The prices of clove and cotton also increased slightly to $ 4,600.0 per ton and $ 1.7 per kg, respectively. Meanwhile, the prices of sisal and cotton Memphis remained unchanged. The average prices of crude oil (UK Brent), Dubai and white products recorded small increases to $ 132.8 per barrel, $ 131.2 per barrel, and $ 1227.0 per ton respectively.
Gold prices went up by 5.7 per cent to $ 939.8 per troy ounce largely due to economic slowdown in the USA.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 East African Business Week. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
