SADC DFI proactive in facing universal challenges - Honourable Minister of Finance and Planning Dr. Ashatu Kijaji: Page 2 of 3

for developing countries, which include nations gathering here today, to access external finance for their national development priorities. These challenges correspondingly are creating new challenges and risks for managing development finance streams. Analyses of trends for finance stream, taking Tanzania as an example, reveal that there has been a decreasing influence of international sources of finance relative to domestic sources that has made aid flows as a percentage of Gross National Income decline; whereas Foreign Direct Investment flows continue to be more or less remained stable. This pattern visibly indicate that, dependency on aid as a source of development financing is declining, and more efforts are now been directed at mobilizing more domestic sources.  This needs to be done hand in hand with strategies to increase the capacity of tapping into investment resources from the private sector that if involved can play a great role in supporting governments to achieve their development endeavors.

Honorable Vice President, this Forum which you will soon open has 37 members who are aligned to share experiences and strategies that will support the capacities of the SADC Development Financial Institutions (SADC - DFIs) to deliver on their mandates towards the achievement of economic growth, create job opportunities and hence attain poverty alleviation.  The SADC-DFIs congregated here today are open to implement suggestions that will enhance the role of DFIs in the Region hence rationalize the existence of DFIs for benefit of the region.  The theme of this year’s Forum: “Towards Industrialization for Sustainable and Inclusive Development – The Role of DFIs in SADC” , augurs well with our national agenda of becoming a semi-industrialized country by the year 2020.

Honorable Vice President, without further do, on behalf of the host-institutions, TIB Development Bank, Tanzania Agricultural Development Bank and The National Development Corporation, which are the Tanzanian