Critics decry purchase of air traffic control system

Tanzanian civil society organisations on Tuesday criticised President Benjamin Mkapa's government for "secretly" deciding to purchase a controversial US $40 million air traffic control system despite criticism from aid agencies, international financial institutions and Tanzanian politicians. "We, Tanzanian civil society organisations (CSOs), note with concern that the negotiations for the radar system have been going on secretly for a number of years, and a down-payment made, during which time we and other like-minded organisations have been campaigning for debt cancellation," a statement released on Tuesday by 10 organisations, including Action Aid Tanzania and Oxfam (GB) Tanzania, stated. The statement called for wider participation of the Tanzanian people, including the country's parliament, in any future Tanzanian government decisions to take on multilateral, bilateral or commercial debts. The Tanzanian opposition leader, Ibrahim Lipumba, has criticised the lack of transparency in the deal. "This is something that has never been debated in public; it is very opaque - no information has been released," the UK-based Financial Times newspaper quoted Lipumba, the head of the Civic United Front (CUF), as saying in December The British government in December approved the sale of the $40 million air traffic control system by British aerospace firm, BAe Systems, to Tanzania, despite its being at the centre of a row in the UK over the government's commitment to tackling poverty in Africa. Critics, including the international aid agency Oxfam, have said the decision undermines UK Prime Minister Tony Blair's pledge to put Africa's development on the international agenda, and his government's work to write off the debts of developing countries. "We strongly condemn the decision by the UK government to issue a licence to BAe for the radar, an act that is inconsistent with their international aid, debt relief and sustainable development policies," the statement from the Tanzanian CSOs said. Tanzania won some $3 billion in debt relief from international donors in November. Mkapa pledged at the time to use the debt relief the country had won under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative to "strengthen support for education, health, water, roads and other priority sectors". In order to purchase the system, however, the Tanzania government was planning to borrow some $40 million from the UK's Barclays Bank at an interest rate of 4.9 percent, the BBC reported on 29 January. Mkapa has said his country needs the new system to replace obsolete technology, but research undertaken for the World Bank has suggested that the system envisaged is unsuitable and over-expensive. The Bank has estimated that a suitable system should cost about $10 million. "We are thankful to the Bretton-Woods institutions [the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund] for showing concern for the people of Tanzania by opposing the deal. We would like to see the demands for public interest scrutiny such as the radar extended to all major investment projects," the Tanzanian CSOs said in their statement on Tuesday. Tanzanian Foreign Minister Jakaya Kikwete last month defended the deal, saying it was up to the government how it decided to prioritise spending. "We are not a department of the World Bank, we are a country, and it's a bit insulting to suggest that we need to wait for the World Bank to prescribe what's best for us," the BBC on 29 January quoted him as saying. However, the Tanzanian CSOs grouping on Tuesday urged the governments of Tanzania and the UK, as well as the donor community in general, "to take seriously their collective commitment to open government and pro-poor policies, which will fail miserably if such murky deals are allowed to proceed unsanctioned."