AfricaPress-Tanzania: ZANZIBAR recorded 1.1bn/- exports last month, with China accounting for 27.1 per cent of the total sales.
The Office of Chief Government Statistician (OCGS) Head of Trade and Taxation Unit Asia Khassan Mussa said yesterday that food and live animals, which earned the country 669.8m/- accounted for over 60 per cent of the entire exports value.
Other products under the Standard International Trade Classification (SITC) with their values in brackets were machines and transport equipment (244.2m/-), other industrial products (111.9m/-), goods manufactured from domestic raw materials (111.8m/- ) as well as chemicals and related goods (400,000m/-).
Behind China, which spent 300.2m/- on purchases from Zanzibar, other countries with their expenditures in brackets were Uganda (172.2m/- ), France (146.4m/-), India (131.1m/-) and United States of America (100.7m/-).
The major exports to especially China, India and the US were cloves and seaweeds, the statistician said.
However, the exports value has declined by 94.2 and 67.8 per cent compared to January 2020 and December 2020, respectively.
During the period under review, the Indian Ocean’s semi-autonomous archipelago imported goods worth 76.5bn/- , creating a trade deficit of 75.4bn/- in January 2020.
Ms Khassan said the imports of fuel and lubricants accounted for 43 per cent of the total value, which increased by 2.9 per cent from the corresponding period last year. The imports value, however, dwindled by 4.3 compared to December 2020.
The statistician said the importation of consumer goods declined by 30.4 per cent compared to January 2020 and increased by 13.5 from the previous month, while the imports of capital goods declined by 6.3 and 44.6 per cent compared to January 2020 and December 2020, respectively.
Intermediary goods imports increased by 46 per cent compared to the corresponding period last year while the upward change was 15.3 per cent from December 2020.
The top five sources of Zanzibar imports for the month of January with their values in brackets were United Arabs Emirates (33.3bn/-), China (12.35bn/-), Russia (6.23bn/), Kenya (3.56bn/-) and India (3.47bn/-).
