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targets. That this is not the case so far in Tanzania seems to be a
reflection of the ‘capital budget’ orientation of annual planning
and a failure to extend planning to production or even recurrent
spending in the modern sector. This dificiency is, however, widely
recognised. Recently the Minister for Finance observed that
‘Parastatal budgets — recurrent as well as capital, cash flow as well
as profit and loss — must come to be at the central core of national
planning. To date this is only partly true of their capital budgets,
and almost not at all of their recurrent. Yet until it is true we are
not really planning for production nor for overall efficiency in
resource use very much better than we were prior to 1966 when
we tried to run a national capital budgetary and planning exercise
which itook no serious account of recurrent revenue and ex-
penditure or their cost benefit efficiency.’'®

Underlying the technical problems of learning how to plan
operations and the mechanical problem of building up the plan-
ning system and defining relations within it, has been the much
more serious problem of the lack of a clear out national develop-
ment strategy which, in turn, has made the technical and
mechanical problems that much more insurmountable. Such a
strategy requires a consensus of opinion as to the nature and
causes of underdevelopment and on the type of society that Tan-
zania wishes to create for only when there is agreement on these
fundamentals will it be possible to identify development paths
which are both feasible and desirable. These are therefore very
much ideological questions over which there appears to be
significant disagreement. Recently, for instance, there have been
two quite conflicting statements from ministers about the desirable
future role of the external sector in Tanzania's development — one
calling for an inward-looking strategy the other for expanded ex-
ports of primary commodities.!” Clearly, until such issues are
resolved, including the time span over which changes are to take
place, there can be no unambiguous guidelines for parastatals — or
any other public sector investor —to follow. This then opens the
way for considerable dispute between the government planners
and the parastatals for, as the General Manager of the N.D.C. has
complained: If Party policy is defined in broad terms and if
responsibility lines between the civil service and parastatals are in-
distinctly drawn, serious clashes over interpretation of Party policy
will develop when practical cases are examined in the light of that

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