Tanzania bows down to 'COVID-19 statistics for loan'

By Osoro Nyawangah, MWANZA Tanzania

Since June this year, Tanzania government has been under pressure to publish data on the spread of coronavirus as a condition for approval of a $574 million emergency loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The government officially applied for a Tsh. 1.3 trillion ($571 million) loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to help tackle the Covid-19 pandemic economic challenges the same month.

“We have submitted the application to IMF within the specified time. But I will provide detailed information in the near future.” Said the minister for Finance and Planning, Mwigulu Nchemba. 

Earlier, the international lender gave the publication of the pandemic data as the vital condition for consideration of loan application for economically struggling countries.

“Publication of such data would be a precondition of moving ahead,” said Jens Reinke, the IMF’s resident representative in Tanzania. “In order to justify emergency financing in the context of the pandemic, you need to publish relevant public-health data.”

In September 7, the Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved a disbursement of SDR132.6 million (US$189.08 million) under the Rapid Credit Facility (RCF) and a purchase equivalent to SDR265.2 million (US$378.17 million) under the Rapid Financing Instrument (RFI), a total of SDR397.8 million (US$567.25 million or 100 percent of quota). This emergency financing will help finance Tanzania’s urgent balance of payment needs stemming from the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Following the developments, the government of Tanzania said yesterday that Covid-19 statistics will be made public on a weekly basis, and urged the public to adhere to the recommended prevention methods against the coronavirus.

The country submitted the latest report to the World Health Organisation (WHO) on January 3, 2021 indicating there were 25,846 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 719 deaths.

The Minister of Health, Community Development, Gender, Elderly and Children, Dorothy Gwajima, told journalists in Dar es Salaam that the weekly release of statistics is a confirmation that Covid-19 is still a public health threat in the country.

Officiating the commemoration of 22 years of Health Basket Fund, the minister said that Covid-19 data was now available as per WHO requirements.

She further urged the public to get vaccinated against the pandemic to prevent suffering from severe forms of the disease or the risk of death.

She said the statistics would be available online and the WHO website instead of press conferences. “It is not possible to conduct a press conference every day to brief reporters. Through the WHO website, we update the statistics weekly for everyone to access.”

As of October 2, a total of 595,938 vaccine doses had been administered to Tanzanians, and the government was expecting to receive more 489,042 doses of Sinopharm vaccine from China as part of the Covid-19 vaccination strategy.

Tanzania launched mass vaccinations in late July after receiving slightly over a million doses of Johnson and Johnson jabs donated by the United States.

Former Tanzania’s president John Magufuli, who spent the better part of the pandemic playing down the virus; had urged Tanzanians to shun mask-wearing and also denounced vaccines as a Western conspiracy, frustrating the World Health Organization.