Notes

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Compensation amounted to about Shs. 22/ = million. See, The State Trading
Corporation, Second Annual Report, (Dar es Salaam, State Trading Cor-
poration, 1969), p. 12. For a list of the nationalised companies see p. 5 of the
same report.

Confinement meant that Government had given S.T.C. the legal monopoly
over the importation and wholesaling of the product. In practice this
monopoly was not always fully or even partially activated. In some cases,
S.T.C. would stock and sell some lines but allow the importation of other
specific items upon direct order; other goods were imported solely by the
private sector (with S.T.C.'s permission) as S.T.C. did not yet have the
capacity to take over; and in still other instances, all importations of an item
through the Corporation, although it did not stock any of the line.
McKinsey & Co. had earlier undertaken the reorganisation of the -National
Development Corporation.

The remaining imports were to be monopolised by other institutions, such as
the National Development Corporations, various Ministry of Agriculture
parastatals, etc.

These divisions and other peripheral activities operated by S.T.C., such as
Tanzania Hides and Skins, the Giraffe Extract Company, and Tanzania Elimu
Supplies, were not a critical part of the Corporation. The socialisation of the
export trade has since been scheduled for other solutions.

Price lists, invoices and stock availability sheets were all in English. On one
occasion coffee cups were thought to be out of stock because a manager had
them listed as vikombe vya kahawa on his personal list of stock items; and in
another instance hurricane lantern globes stayed in a godown for months, in
spite of a backlog of orders, because the godown manager thought they were
glasses — the cartons read: Glass, Handle With Care.

The Dar es Salaam Branch Office was so small that accounts and clerks were
forced to work at makeshift desks on the staircases!

By the end of 1971 the ‘best’ estimates of the stock value varied, within the
Corporation itself, from between Shs. 240/ = million. Some divisions, for
example, valued alt stocks of a particular item with the same price
(sometimes the latest received), while others valued stock by the value on the
invoice.

It makes no sense to suggest that S.T.C. salesmen should do their job out of
socialist commitment. They simply do not have that commitment; they will at
some time in the future, but in the meantime they cannot be expected to do
jobs requiring incentives for good performance if they receive none. In any
case, incentives and bonuses are not antithetical to socialist systems.

The main rationale for this plan was to avoid having to purchase stocks and
buildings and equipment from wholesalers a necessity if they were simply
nationalised.

This assumes that the Head Office would have been housed in rented facilities
rather than the proposed office complex.

Correct estimates are not possible because of poor S.T.C. accounting data.

89