Government challenges "filthy" corruption rating

The Tanzanian government has reacted strongly to Transparency International's (TI) most recent report that gave Tanzania the "filthy" tag, reports this week's East African newspaper. Asked about TI's Corruption Perception Index 2001 that gave Tanzania a 2.2 rating out of 10, thereby classifying it as one of the most corrupt countries in the world, Wilson Masilingi, the minister responsible for good governance, denied the existence of rampant corruption in the country, and described TI as "an enemy of developing countries". The report and the minister's comments have prompted mixed reactions in the capital, Dar es Salaam. Edward Hoseah of the country's Prevention of Corruption Bureau, an organisation with the a mandate of preventing, investigating, prosecuting, educating and researching on all aspects of corruption, said the report was a good indication of the levels of corruption, but insisted that it was a subjective view and that more time was needed to get a clearer picture of progress made. "The fact that people have developed an interest to talk about corruption in itself shows that something has been generated. There is a commitment. However there is a bottleneck in terms of measurement," he said. Meanwhile, Ibrahim Seushi, the head of TI's Tanzania Section, stressed that TI had been working closely with the government since 1995, and said he believed that the minister has missed the point. "How the minister should have used the corruption perception index is to measure the effectiveness of the anti-corruption progress that the government is undertaking. The perceptions of the business people are not necessarily in line with what the government is doing," he told IRIN on Thursday. Seushi sees tax administration, public procurement, contracting, clearing of goods through customs and the bureaucracy in the granting of business licences as areas where corruption is still prevalent. This problem, he believes, can only be tackled by way of greater commitment to the issue. "There is more that needs to be done in terms of enforcing the strategy that has been put in place. There is more that needs to be done in terms of providing models, and we need more political will, strengthening the detection of corruption, and we need more rigorous punishment of those people found guilty so that people see corruption as a risky business, and until that time, you won't see much reduction in corruption," he said. However, the business sector's reaction was very different. According to David Howarth, the managing director of Kilombero Sugar, the sugar industry has been heavily implicated in corruption scandals in the past - in the most recent of which a former Minister of Trade and Industry was accused of the illegal issuing of sugar licenses - but the government is working hard to ensure proper legislation and control measures are in place. "It is settling down at the moment. The large stocks of imported sugar are dwindling and committees have been set up to plan volumes and timings of imports of sugar. From what we can tell, that has been rather successful and things seem to be well controlled, but there are bound to be people trying to smuggle and evade duty," he told IRIN on Friday. While corruption had historically been a way of life, he added, the government's efforts were paying off. "You are never going to eliminate corruption, but what they have done in the last year or two has been very, very positive in terms of current investors and, I would suggest, for future investors," he concluded. Sources from the energy sector agreed, saying that "filthy" was not a fair assessment of the levels of corruption in business, and they cited the example of the Malaysian company, IPTL, that had tried to cut corners in the industry and was now paying for the consequences dearly. "They tried to create unfair competition and now they are being accused fairly widely of corruption. They have come unstuck and, financially, it has been a disaster for them. It may have looked great when they signed the agreement but it has gone downhill ever since," one of them told IRIN. But it was exactly this case which showed that corruption was still a major issue in Tanzania, said Brian Cooksey of the Tanzanian Development Research Group. "There is definitely a serious problem with grand corruption. The donors are aware of it and it is probably as bad as it ever as been but we're trying to pretend that it's not," he told IRIN on Friday. "A lot of people are trying to pretend that we're going in the right direction in terms of fighting corruption, and if they mean that they are dealing with more cases of petty corruption than they have done in the past then that could be one measure of change in the right direction. "But, in my view, the main concern is still grand corruption, as this is where the public is the loser, the poor get poorer and Tanzania's socioeconomic future is undermined," he added.