Tanzania Monthly Economic Review: October 2015: Dependency From Oil Imports Reduced By 7.0%

Tanzania Monthly Economic Review published by the Bank of Tanzania (BOT) provides the latest data on inflation, money supply, interest rates, exchange rates, current account, exports and imports.

Tanzania Inflation

For the month of October 2015, headline inflation increased to 6.3% in the year ending October 2015 from 6.1% in September 2015, mainly driven by food inflation.

Between October 2015 and September 2015, prices for all major food crops increased. Annual core inflation eased to 2.1% in October 2015 from 2.2% in September 2015.

Tanzania Banks’ Interest Rates

During September 2015, lending and deposit rates generally increased. The overall lending rate increased to 16.19% from 16.11% in August 2015, while overall time deposit rate averaged 9.03 percent compared with 9.05% in August 2015.

Tanzania Exchange Rates

In September 2015 the Tanzanian Shilling (TZS) depreciated against the US dollar by 1.9% to an average exchange rate of TZS 2,167.9 per US dollar from TZS 2,127.4 per US dollar in August 2015.

Tanzania Current Account

During the year ending September 2015, current account balance narrowed to a deficit of USD 4,237.7 million, being 13.6% lower than the deficit in the corresponding period in 2014.

This development was largely driven by an increase in export of goods and services as well as a decrease in goods import bill.

Tanzania Exports

The value of goods and services export increased by 9.0% to USD 9,374.7 million in the year ending September 2015 from the amount recorded in the corresponding period in 2014.

This development was largely explained by increase in travel receipts (tourism), traditional exports (coffee, cashew nuts and tobacco) and export of manufactured goods.

Tanzania Imports

During the year ending July 2015, the value of import of goods and services was USD 13,351.4 million compared with USD 13,472.2 million in the corresponding period in 2014.

The decrease in imports was mostly driven by decrease of oil imports.

Oil imports declined by 22.12% to USD 3,002.3 million, following a fall in oil prices in the world market and relatively lower import volume than in the corresponding period in 2014.

The share of oil import to the value of goods import remained decreased to 28.35% from about 35.61% compared with the corresponding period in 2014.

Follow the link to access BOT Monthly Economic Review for October 2015: https://www.bot-tz.org/Publications/MonthlyEconomicReviews/MER%20OCTOBER%202015.pdf