With India, Tanzania has power in its corner

PRESIDENT Samia Suluhu Hassan is in India at the invitation of Droupadi Murmu, President of the Republic of India, where she was accompanied by a high-level delegation, including the Minister for Foreign Affairs and East African Cooperation January Makamba (MP) and other members from different sectors, senior government officials as well as members of the Tanzania Business Community.

With a view to further strengthen the bilateral relations and expanding cooperation across various sectors, the two leaders announced the elevation of Indo-Tanzania relationship to the level of ‘Strategic Partnership’.

Both sides noted that the strategic partnership will help the two countries to jointly work on issues like Maritime Security, Defence Cooperation, Development Partnership, Trade and Investment among others.

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India is the largest destination for Tanzania’s exports and both countries have a bilateral trade of $6.4 billion of which India’s exports alone amount to the value of $3.9 billion and the imports from Tanzania amount to $2.4 billion in 2022-2023.

Tanzania as an open economy engages herself in international trade which constitutes significantly a proportion of the country’s aggregate output.

As in other developing countries, Tanzania regards trade as the main instrument for the development and growth of the country.

Being a littoral state of Africa, Tanzania has an important place in India’s vision of SAGAR, Security and Growth for all in the Region and also coincides with the African Union vision for peace and security in Africa with focus on development of blue economy, ocean economy for accelerated economic growth.

In 2021, India exported $1.63B to Tanzania. The main products that India exported to Tanzania are refined petroleum ($342M), packaged medicaments ($227M), and motorcycles and cycles ($43.8M).

During the last 26 years, the exports of India to Tanzania have increased at an annualised rate of 10.8 per cent, from 114 million dollars in 1995 to 1.63billion dollars in 2021.

In 2021, Tanzania exported 1.86 billion dollars to India. The main products that Tanzania exported to India were raw copper (757million dollars), gold (518 million dollars) and dried legumes (257 million dollars).

During the last 26 years, the exports of Tanzania to India have increased at an annualised rate of 12.3 per cent, from 92.1 million dollars in 1995 to 1.86 billion dollars in 2021.

With India as a trading partner, Tanzania’s interest in cooperating with the government of India in the field of Blue economy including tourism, maritime trade, services and infrastructure, marine scientific research, capacity in seabed mining, ocean conservation and maritime safety and security can be realised.

This has become possible because it is from this trip by President Samia that India and Tanzania agreed to cooperate under the framework of the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) to ensure a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable Indian Ocean Region.

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