AfricaPress-Tanzania: THE shilling maintained marginal depreciation after losing 77 pips for a week ending last Friday and expected to slowly recover.
The shilling recover, albeit slowly, was pegged on the government move to open sky in a bid to revive tourism sector following coronavirus lockdown.
The shilling closed the week at a weighted average exchange rate of 2,304/07 against the US dollars.
Orbit Securities said yesterday through its Weekly Market Synopsis that the local currency is expected to slowly stabilize as activities especially those attracting foreign inflows slowly recover.
“The most notable activity is tourism which has seen some revival since the country opened borders to foreigners,” Orbit report said.
The sector is main contributor of the forex in the country and its shakeup may affect the foreign currency exchange equilibrium.
According to Bank of Tanzania (BoT), latest Monthly Economic Review showed that travel receipts, which is mainly tourism, rose by 3.1 per cent to 2.59 billion US dollars for the year ending March.
The central bank attributed the receipt increase to increase number of tourist arrivals to 1,507,382 from 1,480,095 in corresponding in 2019.
On monthly basis travel receipts dropped to 106.6million US dollars in March from 236.6 million US dollars in February. Last March the revenue was 186.8 million US dollars.
The drop corresponded with number of tourist arrivals that decreased to 66,650 from 137,199 in February and 108,323 last March.
“…The drop owing to suspension of international flights and lockdowns to counter the spread of COVID-19,” BoT report said.
Also in this year, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism projected the sector earnings this year could shrink from 2.6billion US dollars to 598million US dollars.
In the week ending last Friday, the value of transactions on the Interbank Foreign Exchange Market (IFEM) rose by 11 percent to a total of 10.8 million US dollars compared to 9.75 million US dollars realized during the previous week.
