The Bank of Tanzania (BOT) Monthly Economic Review for December 2016 shows that the value of export of goods and services in the year ending November 2016, increased by +6.5%.
Overall exports reached USD9,426.5m, compared to USD8,855.1m in the year ending November 2015.
The improvement was mainly driven by travel receipts (tourism), gold, and traditional commodities.
Travel maintained the leading position among foreign currency earners, before manufactured goods, gold, and traditional exports, with USD2,217.9m worth of exports in the year ending November 2016, showing a year-on-year increase of +10.34%.
The improvement is largely due to increases in the number of tourist arrivals and volume of transit goods to neighboring countries.
Gold exports increased by +23.66% to USD1,447.6m as a result of increase in export volume and recovery in prices in the world market.
Among Tanzania’s traditional exports, increases were seen in tobacco (USD354.5m, +40.06%), cashewnuts (USD263.4m, +5.02%), cotton (USD49.5m, +59.68%), tea (USD46.7m, +8.6%), and cloves (USD52.3m, +248.67%).
There was also a rise in export value of other minerals (excluding gold), oil seeds, cereals, cocoa, wood products, and hides and skins.
World Commodities Prices
On annual basis, average world market prices of gold and cotton went up while those of coffee, oil, tea, sisal and cloves declined.
The price of gold rose to USD1,242.19 in the year ending November 2016 from USD1,266.55 (+6.1%) due to due to increased demand for gold as a safe investment.
The increase in price of cotton to USD1.62 per kg (+3%) was on account of high global demand.
Prices of coffee fell to USD1.91 (-3.5%) per kg of Robusta and USD3.59 (-0.6%) per kg of Arabica coffee.
The fall in the prices of coffee was largely attributed to increased coffee production in Brazil and Vietnam during 2015/16 crop season.
The decline in the price of cloves to USD8.54 (-17.8%) per kg was due to weak global demand. The fall in tea prices to USD2.62 (-3%) per kg was mainly due to low demand for tea from Russia and Middle East.
