afrol News, 30 November - Tanzania's Social Action Fund today received fresh foreign funds to finance its programme of improving social infrastructure and enhance access to essential public services by poor communities in the country. A total of US$ 202 million in loans and grants were received today.

The World Bank today approved a credit* of US$ 129 million and a grant of US$ 21 million for the Second Social Action Fund in Tanzania. Further, a credit of US$ 52 million was approved to support local government reform in Tanzania.

The Second Social Action Fund is set to help "empower individuals, households, and communities in the implementation of measures which can assist them in better managing risks associated with health, education, sanitation, water, transportation, energy and food insecurity," according to the World Bank.

The project aims at contributing to the Tanzanian government's goal to "build human capabilities through reducing vulnerability and managing livelihood risks." It is to pay attention to improving social services and increasing empowerment and accountability in the areas of finance and governance.

- The project provides a multi-sectoral response to the needs of communities notably by enabling them to take advantage of market-created opportunities as well as ensure the best use of resources made available to them by the government, said Nginya Mungai Lenneiye of the World Bank.

The National Village Fund component of the project is to allow for communities to access resources that can stimulate economic activities and allow poor households to increase their incomes. It aims at helping to reduce community vulnerability.

In Tanzania, the achievement of poverty reduction has been hampered by the failure to adequately channel public resources to the poorest segments of the Tanzanian society, especially in the rural and peri-urban areas, the government admits.

Poor performance by the public sector, skewed growth in favour of urban areas, and limited opportunities to generate higher government revenues that could be used to target or fund poverty-reduction programmes have been identified as some of the most significant obstacles to the achievement of better poverty reduction results.

It was therefore expected that the Second Social Action Fund should give the government of Tanzania the "necessary tools to facilitate the mainstreaming of the community driven development approach into transparent and measurable budget support," the World Bank stated today.

Also today, the World Bank approved a credit of US$ 52 million to support local government reform in Tanzania. This programme aims to "strengthen fiscal decentralisation, improve accountability in the use of local government resources, and improve management of intergovernmental transfers."

- It will also increase access to infrastructure and services in unplanned and under-served areas of Dar-es-Salaam, as well as improve revenue performance to assure that infrastructure is sustainably operated and maintained, the World Bank said.

By staff writer

© afrol News

Related pages and feature

Current afrol News Top Stories