The Effects of Macroeconomic variables on Economic growth in Tanzania:1980 - 2020

The main purpose of this dissertation work is to scrutinize the effects of macroeconomic variables on economic growth in Tanzania. The study is carried out using annual time series data covering a period of 1980 to 2020. Ordinary Least Square (OLS), Error Correction Models (ECM) and Granger Causality Test have been used to determine the impact of macroeconomic variables on economic growth. Also, the dynamic correlations and innovations of macroeconomic variables and economic growth have been intuitively analysed by undertaking the impulse response function (IRF). OLS results show that economic growth of Tanzania is positively and significant influenced by inflation rate, real exchange rate and government expenditure. Also, the significance of Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) for regression residuals demonstrate an existence of long run relationship among variable. ECM results also ignites the influence of money supply and RER on economic growth in the short run, and significant equilibrium restoration in general. The IRF innovation results suggest that, the policy variables inflation rate, money supply, real exchange rate, trade openness and government expenditure have significant impact on economic growth in Tanzania specifically in the long run, thus some time with lag. Although, as a priori monetary and fiscal policy variables do have a dominant effect on economic activity of any country, this study clearly shows that economic growth in Tanzania is dominated by its own dynamics in most of the periods. Thus, the study recommends right policy mix given the dynamics would have significant impact to the economic growth in Tanzania. Keywords: Economic growth, Macroeconomic variables, ECM, Granger Causality, Impulse Response Function

Assessment of the Quality of coffee parchments in Southern Highlands of Tanzania: A case of Mbozi District in Songwe Region

It’s unfortunate that even a single defective of a coffee bean can contribute to affect the receptive-lot of coffee. Coffee parchments or beans with high quality fetches high price in the world market. The study aimed at assessing the quality of coffee parchments along the post-harvest stages. Main focus was on improvement of post-harvest practices for coffee quality of coffee from farm level and to the processing under supervision of primary societies. The study involved coffee farmers in 6 Agricultural Marketing and Cooperatives Societies (AMCOS). Questionnaire, check list tools and physical observation were used for data collection. The result indicates that coffee farmers in Tanzania failed to fetch a good price from their produce due to low grades and classes of coffee parchments. Low grades and classes were observed to be attributed by application of poor practices along the coffee value chain. Our study suggests that, coffee stakeholders and the government should support the development of coffee sector along the value chain by up-scaling of good practices. Keywords: Coffee Quality; Red-Cherries and Parchments, Mbozi Tanzani