possible, trusting that the nature of their importance will be fur-
ther clarified by the analysis of subsequent sections.?

The first relevant feature is Tanzania's continuing dependence
on the international capitalist system. The movement towards
‘socialism and self-reliance’ characteristic of policy making in the
post Arusha period has redefined this relationship in certain im-
portant respects. Indeed the attendant undertaking of sweeping
nationalisations was the initiative most essential to giving the
parastatal sector its central importance in the present day Tan-
zZanian economy.

It is more difficult to affirm unequivocally that this expanded
state control over economic surplus and over centres of economic
decision-making has always been used in ways most effective to
restructuring the economy. Too often the rhetoric of self-reliance
has not become the reality of a ‘self-centred’ economy® an
economy which would be powered by emphasis upon production
for mass needs, upon the movement towards indigenous manufac-
ture of capital goods, and upon the development of a locally based
dnd wholly relevant technological capacity. Too often ‘the tyranny
of the demand concept,” in Muhbub ul Haq's phrase,* has carried
the day — the investment of surplus often being directed first
towards such immediately profitable domestic spheres as luxury
consumption goods and towards such immediately effective ear-
ners of foreign exchange as tourism, rather than towards struc-
tural transformation. These kinds of choices (made almost by
default, it would seem) characterise most centrally the workings of
the National Development Corporation® of course, but the lack of
a root-and-branch challenge to dependence must inevitably shape
the activities of most of the parastatals.

One must be circumspect about this: for example, some in-
dustries are being established which do forge close links with
agriculture, and the need for a growing capital-goods sector is
recognised in the Second Five-Year Plan. But significant ac-
complishment in such spheres is still much more randomly than
systematically achieved. The government seems, in fact to be in-
creasingly aware of this weakness — the need for an “industrial
strategy’’ is also stressed in the Five-Year Plan and the phrase has
been trotted out on a number of subsequent occasions. And yet
almost nothing has been done to remedy such a defect and to spell
out such a strategy. As a result decision-making in the field of

7