Development partners have voiced their concern about grinding poverty among the majority of Tanzanians despite recent economic gains.

They cited inequitable distribution of resources and corruption as among factors that hindered efforts to alleviate poverty.

The Development Partners Group (DPG) warned in a statement read in Dar es Salaam yesterday by co-chair Pieter Dorst that donors may find it hard to maintain aid to Tanzania if corruption concerns persisted.

"Tanzania's development partners believe it is very important that the government shows it is determined to tackle corruption, including grand corruption...development partners may inevitably find it hard to maintain high levels of support if concerns about corruption grow," Mr Dorst said at the annual national policy dialogue.

The five-day dialogue that started yesterday brings together senior government officials, development partners, members of the business community and representatives from civil society organisations to review progress in the implementation of the development agenda.

According to Mr Dorst, who doubles as the Dutch deputy ambassador, Tanzania's present ranking in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index showed that the war on corruption still left a lot to be desired.

"This tells us that people's perceptions are that corruption is getting worse rather than better," he said.

Tanzania has slipped 24 places in the global corruption rankings after dropping from the 102nd position in 2008 to 126th place in the 2009 survey.

But Finance and Economic Affairs minister Mustafa Mkulo assured the donor community that governance would remain at the top of the government's development agenda.

"We are determined to seriously tackle the corruption issue since we understand that development partners give us money from their countries'taxpayers," he said.

Mr Mkulo said the Fourth Phase government's track record in fighting corruption spoke for itself, noting that there were only 58 corruption cases before various courts when President Jakaya Kikwete took over four years ago.

"Until September this year, the number of cases has increased to 1,578... this shows that we are doing something."

According to Mr Dorst, the global economic crisis had affected every country, and that the Netherlands, which is among the 14 donors that provide Tanzania with general budget support, was no exception.

This meant that development partners would only scale up their aid to Tanzania if the country upheld the highest standards of good governance, he added.

Despite official records showing that Tanzania's economy has been growing by an impressive seven per cent annually during the past seven years, the development partners voiced their concern about high levels of poverty.

Poverty and human development reports indicate that poverty levels fell by a marginal two percentage points to 33.6 per cent between 2001 and 2007.

"This indicates that one third of Tanzanians are still living below the poverty line... the absolute number of poor people has increased by over one million, indicating that Tanzania is likely to miss the Mkukuta, Mkuza and MDG targets on income poverty,"Mr Dorst said.

Mr Mkulo conceded that the country had performed poorly on the aspect of income poverty, putting it at risk of failing to meet the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) Number One of halving the number of people living on less than one US dollar a day by 2015.

Also lined up at this year's annual national policy dialogue is a review of achievements and challenges of the implementation of Mkukuta and Mkuza, which ends next year.