Dar tops investment list in March

DAR ES SALAAM has naturally dominated the list of both foreign and domestic direct investments registered in March this year.
The city that is the country’s business hub, received 20 out of the 37 projects approved by Tanzania Investment Centre (TIC) last month.
According to TIC monthly investment bulletin for March, the investments in Dar es Salaam were valued at 672.44 million US dollars, 84 per cent of the total investment for the month.
The bulletin indicated that the projects are expected to create 5,395 jobs if implemented as planned.
Dar es Salaam took the line share while the immediate regions, six of them, each received two investments and their value in the bracket are Iringa (72.5 million US dollars), Shinyanga (11.43 million US dollars) Kilimanjaro (6.95 million US dollars), Coast (5.7 million US dollar), Dodoma (5.57 million US dollar) and Tanga (0.97 million US dollar).
The projects in the six regions are estimated to create 1459 employees.
Additionally, the other five regions listed one project each were Arusha (7.5 million US dollars), Geita (0.5 million US dollars), Lindi (3.3 million US dollars), Morogoro (1.55 million US dollars) and Mwanza (7.76 million US dollars), while job opportunities expected to be 860.
The transportation sector, according to the bulletin, emerged as the dominant player, with approved investments totalling 393.96 million US dollars, a 349 per cent increase from the corresponding period last year of 87.7million US dollars.
On the other hand, while commercial buildings, manufacturing and transportation sectors were the top three sectors in attracting foreign direct investments (FDIs), the largest portion of the domestic investment (DI) was contributed by transportation, commercial buildings and manufacturing sectors.
Likewise, the majority of new jobs are expected to be generated from transportation, manufacturing and commercial buildings.
Moreover, the top five leading sources of FDI in March are China, US, Mauritius, Spain and India.
Meanwhile, according to TIC, the country attracted investment worth 1.2 billion US dollars from 93 projects in three months to March, and is estimated to generate more than 16400 job opportunities.
Such investment is an increase of 48.9 per cent compared to 787.4 million US dollars last year.