The commercial banks quoted the shilling
at between 1,575/- and 1,610/, the rate corporate firms were trying to
push down to strengthen the local currency further.
“The market is expected to remain
slightly volatile,” Standard Chartered Bank said on its daily market
report.
The shilling had in recent days experienced relatively huge
demand from imports, especially oil for electricity generation to bridge
the deficit due to withdrawal of 350 megawatts from hydropower due to
drought.
Earlier this week, Tanzania Electric
Supply Company (TANESCO) said it was spending 5.2 million US dollars
(about 8.3bn/-) daily to purchase diesel and heavy furnace oil to run
its three oil power plants.
That means the foreign exchange market has
to spew out 5.2 million US dollars daily to cater for oil for
electricity alone.
National Microfinance Bank said
corporate clients were pushing for low rates on the hard currency,
anticipating the firmer shilling. “But, as the market remains liquid,
upside risk still holds incase of any significant demand,” NMB said on
its e-newsletter.
Bank of Tanzania (BoT) shows in its
monthly economic review of September that up to the year ending August,
the value of import of goods and services was 12.9 billion US dollars,
with oil imports alone eating 3.5 billion US dollars or 27.05 per cent
of total bill.
Confederation of the Tanzania Industries
(CTI) Director of Policy and Research Hussein Kamote said recently that
revenues from agro-exports remain too insufficient to support the
shilling due to bad weather.
Source: The Daily News, www.dailynews.co.tz, reported by Abduel Elinaza in Dar es Salaam
0 comments :
Post a Comment