COVID-19 and its Impact on Trade and Transport Sectors in Tanzania
Date
2021-10-08
Authors
Katera, Lucas
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
African Economic Research Consortium
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has hit the countries around the East African region in
different ways with its impact varying across the countries. Also, each country has
adopted its approach to dealing with this health crisis, even though they share
common borders and also a lot of activities are done across borders, including trade in
all sizes. As a result, all sectors whose activities involve crossing borders were heavily
affected in different ways mainly due to limitations of the flow of goods and people
from one country to another. These problems were amplified by countries’ mistrust
of the approach used by others in dealing with the pandemic.
This study examines the extent to which COVID-19 has affected the trade and
transport sectors in Tanzania. In the trade sector, the study examines the performance
of the sector and goes into deep analysis of selected goods. In the transport sector,
the study focuses on assessing the effective flow of goods along the central corridor.
Also, the tourism sector has been analysed, given that the transport sector is one of
its important aspects in its chain. In that manner, the study assesses the tourists’
arrival in Zanzibar, which is one of the main sources of Zanzibar’s income. Overall,
the study analyses the performance of transport and trade sectors in Tanzania before
and after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This study used secondary data from the Bank of Tanzania (BOT), Tanzania Revenue
Authority (TRA), the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the Tanzania Ports Authority
(TPA) and lastly from the Zanzibar Commission for Tourists and the Department of
Immigration Zanzibar. Descriptive statistics were used to capture trends of variables
that constituted the trade and transport sectors before and after the outbreak of the
COVID-19 pandemic.
The findings show that COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the trade and transport
sectors differently. In some cases, even within the same sector, different sub-sectors
have been affected differently. The trade sector was not very much affected, though
imports were relatively more affected. Due to fewer imports during the COVID-19
pandemic, the trade balance was not very much affected like it was in 2019.
In the transport sector, port activities were not very much affected by COVID-19 due
to measures taken by the port to increase efficiency to reduce congestion that would
lead to the spread of the pandemic. However, transit goods were negatively affected
due to conditions imposed at borders like mandatory screening and quarantine of
travellers for a specified time. Tourism was also negatively affected due to travel
restrictions and flight cancellation.