Macroeconomic Instabilities and Cost-Recovery Potentials of Public Sector Organisations

The 2008 financial crisis raised concerns over the performance of public sector organisations operating under different cost recovery regimes. These concerns were linked to potential failure in attaining cost recovery targets as a result of declining revenues during economic downturn. This study utilised the Linear Mixed Effect (LME) models to analyse the data from the World Bank Indicator website and from six national Land Administration Organisations (LAOs), two of which being under “No cost recovery” (NCR) and the remaining being in “Full Cost Recovery” (FCR). Cost recovery indicators were computed from financial statement of national LAOs of these countries. The findings establish that a global financial crisis that is associated with declining GDP and a higher inflation rate can insignificantly reduce the level of cost recovery for LAOs while persistent decline in GDP growth rate significantly eliminates potentials for cost recovery. However prospects for recovery can be traced within the cost-revenue microstructures of LAOs themselves. With a significantly negative relationship between spending in information and technology as a ratio of GDP to the degree of cost recovery, LAOs need only to eliminate rigidities in their cost-revenue structure which tie them to macro-instabilities of the real estate market. Such flexibility can be attained through elastic cross-substitution in the LAO’s gross cost-revenues schedules for registration tasks in favour of information delivery tasks

The impact of traditional house type on rental values in Kinondoni municipality D'Salaam Tanzania

Traditional housing types has for a long time been recognised as the cheapest way to provide rental housing in cities of the global south. Although the architectural design may be cheaper to construct than modern ones, the ultimate rent paid by tenant may not necessarily be lower given the multiplicity of factors that affects rent. This study examines the effects of traditional Swahili houses on rent given the neighbourhood and individual characteristics of both tenants and owners in Kinondoni municipality in D’ salaam Tanzania. The data were collected using questionnaires which were administered to 2,339 owners and 2,113 tenants between February and June 2014. The survey solicited data on imputed rent from owners and actual rent paid by tenants and included an assessment of households, housing and neighbourhood attributes. Using the share of Swahili houses in administrative wards as a criterion for housing clusters, an LME model was then implemented to identify significant determinants of rent-per-bedroom. The results suggest that predominantly traditional Swahili-house type wards are closer to the CBD where rent-per-bedroom tend to be higher in line with both higher income and house size while wards with lower proportions of Swahili houses predominates in the outskirt where rent-per-bedroom is lower in line with both income and size of houses. Thus, although traditional Swahili houses can easily be supplied by self-builders, rent in those houses is not necessarily lower unless the houses are located far away from the city centre. These findings provide evidence on a significant departure of rental values from construction cost in self-built housing in developing countries. It is concluded that self-built traditional houses may not necessarily provide cheaper rental housing despite having all the attributes of being low cost housing from the owners’ point of view

Sector Lending Concentration and Credit Risk: An Evaluation of Lender Perceptions in Tanzania

This study contributes to the debate on the effect of Lending Concentration (LC) on credit risk. It is based on data from an online survey of 151 employees from 37 lending institutions, employees with diverse experience in the different sections of their institutions. Following a successful three-factor solution on LC based on an Exploratory Factor Analysis, Binary logistic regression models were implemented to determine the Perceived Lending Risk (PLR) based on three types of LC, namely Social Status Lending Concentration (SSLC), Private Sector Lending Concentration (PSLC) and Public Employee Lending Concentration (PELC). It was noted that over- concentration based on social status provided an explanation for the increase in Non-Performing Loans (NPL) risk among both large and small lenders. Since Lending Concentration reverses the effect of macroeconomic variables, such as credit risk management practices (CRMPs), Credit Processing Considerations (CPCs), as well as collateral types, assessing the degree at which the lender is concentrated across sectors is imperative, prior to any credit risk management initiative. Although LC directly affects lending risks perceptions alongside the traditional and corporate finance theories, the indirect LC effect via CRMPs, CPCs, bank size and originality, as well as the various collateral typologies seems to provide new insights into this area of research

Factors Affecting Land Titling during Regularization of Informal Settlements in Dar es Salaam Tanzania

The nature and characteristics of informal settlements in Tanzania indicates that informal landholders face a number of constraints attributable to weak land tenure security. In the beginning of 2016, the government undertook major initiatives to regularize informal settlements with limited success on land title uptake. This paper investigates the landholders’ willingness to change land tenure status and constraints faced thereof based on a dataset of 228 questionnaires, interviews and focus group discussions from informal settlements land occupiers in three wards of Dar es Salaam City, Tanzania. The findings indicate that despite a relatively lower rate of land title uptakes in the study areas, landholders are relatively more willing to change their land tenure status. Among the constraints identified include the costs and longer time taken to process the titles which were observed to be the most serious obstacles. Moreover, the oldest age group was observed to be the most reluctant age group to change tenure status when compared to relatively younger age groups although they were mostly aware of the benefits of changing tenure status. Furthermore, the findings indicate that, during title processing, the oldest age group faced the least constraints among the age groups studied. Since the oldest age group are the majority landholders, their reluctance to process title documents significantly reduces the number of title documents issued. In terms of education, the findings show that the highly educated groups have relatively lower willingness to change tenure status than other education groups. Such observation suggests that the more a landholder is educated, the more he or she is aware of the title benefit but the less likely him or her is to process a land title document. In terms of policy implication, for the poor class in informal settlement, regularization cost reduction could be an effective means to facilitate take up of land titles during regularization program though the same policy initiative may not work among the highly educated. For the highly educated and probably the rich, an informality tax could work, provided cheaper mechanisms to collect such tax are devised

Women, Awareness and Land Conflicts: Evidence from Makete Tanzania

This paper examines the awareness and information access linkages that could be improved to enhance women access to appropriate conflict resolution mechanisms in rural Tanzania. The awareness and access to information indices were constructed and combined with women satisfaction levels based on survey data from 112 women in Makete district. The results suggest that public awareness programmes have the potentials to increasing knowledge on conflict resolution options available to women and enhances the chances that they would report land cases to relevant authorities. Furthermore, the mismatch between land right information delivery through public meetings and village leaders and the need to reduce land conflict in rural areas have caused women to report cases to irrelevant authorities. There is therefore a need for Government, NGOs and international donor community to empower local land tribunals in terms of their capacity to deliver public awareness education among rural communities

Factors Affecting Land Titling during Regularization of Informal Settlements in Dar es Salaam Tanzania

The nature and characteristics of informal settlements in Tanzania indicates that informal landholders face a number of constraints attributable to weak land tenure security. In the beginning of 2016, the government undertook major initiatives to regularize informal settlements with limited success on land title uptake. This paper investigates the landholders’ willingness to change land tenure status and constraints faced thereof based on a dataset of 228 questionnaires, interviews and focus group discussions from informal settlements land occupiers in three wards of Dar es Salaam City, Tanzania. The findings indicate that despite a relatively lower rate of land title uptakes in the study areas, landholders are relatively more willing to change their land tenure status. Among the constraints identified include the costs and longer time taken to process the titles which were observed to be the most serious obstacles. Moreover, the oldest age group was observed to be the most reluctant age group to change tenure status when compared to relatively younger age groups although they were mostly aware of the benefits of changing tenure status. Furthermore, the findings indicate that, during title processing, the oldest age group faced the least constraints among the age groups studied. Since the oldest age group are the majority landholders, their reluctance to process title documents significantly reduces the number of title documents issued. In terms of education, the findings show that the highly educated groups have relatively lower willingness to change tenure status than other education groups. Such observation suggests that the more a landholder is educated, the more he or she is aware of the title benefit but the less likely him or her is to process a land title document. In terms of policy implication, for the poor class in informal settlement, regularization cost reduction could be an effective means to facilitate take up of land titles during regularization program though the same policy initiative may not work among the highly educated. For the highly educated and probably the rich, an informality tax could work, provided cheaper mechanisms to collect such tax are devised

Cost Shares and Factor-Cost Ratios in Owner-Built Incremental Housing in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania

The adoption of incremental owner-built techniques in housing construction relies on the associated lower cost compared to developer-built approaches. The mechanism that lowers cost is however, not obvious. This study is based on survey data that were collected using questionnaires which were distributed to 200 respondents in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania with response rate of 22.5%. The analysis results, based on descriptive statistics and regression analysis indicate that an incremental house-builder targeting an additional bedroom incrementally spends 28% lower annual construction cost and each additional square meter built, is associated with 0.4% lower cost. However, such lower cost comes at a 5%–10% longer completion time. These observations suggest that spreading costs over time reduces construction cost through multiple cost-saving channels opened up by time itself and factor intensity. The intensity of incremental housing construction favours increasing expenditure on labour than capital yielding a 5% reduction in annual cost but the greatest cost reduction benefit of up to 26% is realised through increasing expenditure on "capital" with fixed spending on materials during construction

Constraints Facing Incremental Housing Construction in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

The owner-built incremental housing strategy has been used for many years across the developing world. This study examines the implication of construction constraints and challenges on annual construction cost expenditure across housing types. Using descriptive statistics and correlation analysis for 43 incrementally built housing units implemented in Dar es Salaam between year 1993 and 2013, the study has observed that single and two-storey incremental housing builders face the same set of human related construction challenges and external cost-push factors but different administrative, physical and interest related constraints. Of all the cost-push factors examined, interest rate intervention is the only observed strategy that has far reaching potentials to single-storey low cost incremental builders because such builders are less likely to resort to loans as a mechanism to fnance housing. These fndings suggest that any other external efforts targeting physical or human related incremental construction constraints are likely to end up either benefting the high quality builders or every incremental builder regardless of cost or property type or both. The study argues in favour of targeted interest rate support rather than physical or administrative housing assistance if owner-builders are to beneft specifcally in any housing policy support

Land Resource Conflicts in Tanzania: Is there a way out?

The nature of land resource conflict and potential resolution mechanisms has been pervasive in many communities in Tanzania.  Based on practices among professionals working in the land and land related sectors i.e. fisheries and forest resources, this study suggests that since many conflicts emanate from farmers or pastoralists intersection with either farmland or conservation areas i.e. forests, game parks or/and natural ecosystems, these spatial units need to be delineated with proper community participation. Haphazard attempt to exclude one resource user from the other have often turned futile due to corruption and detection inability within government authorities.  Local communities seem to argue for reducing these conservation areas in favour of expanded agriculture and/or grazing land.  It seems however, there is no recipe for land resource conflicts resolution in Tanzania, the cost and benefit of the different approaches need to be evaluated before one can adopt any

Women, Awareness and Land Conflicts: Evidence from Makete Tanzania

This paper examines the awareness and information access linkages that could be improved to enhance women access to appropriate conflict resolution mechanisms in rural Tanzania. The awareness and access to information indices were constructed and combined with women satisfaction levels based on survey data from 112 women in Makete district. The results suggest that public awareness programmes have the potentials to increasing knowledge on conflict resolution options available to women and enhances the chances that they would report land cases to relevant authorities. Furthermore, the mismatch between land right information delivery through public meetings and village leaders and the need to reduce land conflict in rural areas have caused women to report cases to irrelevant authorities. There is therefore a need for Government, NGOs and international donor community to empower local land tribunals in terms of their capacity to deliver public awareness education among rural communities