A liberalized ‘dead’ asset…to reclaim or not ?

I’m remembering when the description ‘investor’ was a media buzz word, particularly when the looted remnants of the state trading corporations and factories were being hived off for sale.

When I penned a piece on this nearly a decade and a half ago, serving President Benjamin Mkapa was saying that globalization had forced many countries to reform policies to attract investors, who were the key to meaningful economic growth.

No doubt correct, but it was also a period for discussion as to the deadening power of the multinationals, and their ability to reduce the planet to a vast global balance sheet, peopled by consumers instead of citizens.

Commenting at the time, environmentalist George Monbiot, who championed the Barabaig pastoralists cause at the height of the Nafco wheat farm scandals in Tanzania, tellingly wrote “the erosion of individualism, and the conformity of belief and action, is an inevitable product of the fusion of state and corporate power.

States which defend this, permit lax planning laws, tax breaks, externalization, and blanket advertising which ensure that we all shop in the same shops, eat in the same restaurants, wear the same clothes, aided by the World Bank, the IMF, and the World Trade Organisation, who apply the same prescription globally, enabling the biggest corporations to trade under the same conditions”.

Absolutely correct, then and now, as every town and city in the western world especially, is just a generic copy of every other high street within them, dominated and homogenised by identical chain stores and global trading outlets, who as we know certainly create their own favorable conditions.

Fifteen years ago, it would have been laughable to say this was happening in Tanzania, but I wondered how long it might be before it did. Though even then, there was already lax planning to allow for dubious investment, the tax breaks etc., and the blanket advertising was starting, as people questioned if the metal monster advertising boards appearing all over Dar could get any bigger!

But back to the present government’s tentative resolve to take back privatized public enterprises that have underperformed, or failed to do so at all, but what’s left to re-possess?.

An obvious example could be Tanganyika Packers Ltd, located within the city at Kawe, and visible to officialdom and the public, it’s been a dormant factory for well over 30 years, ending Tanzania’s ranking as having the second largest herd of cattle in Africa, with some of it used for production of its canned beef, once sold for export.

Those who know its history say, had it been operating today, it might have quelled the clashes between farmers and cattle herdsmen in the country, over their increasing livestock numbers, plus its revival could have helped create jobs, and ultimately government revenue.

The once famous meat canning factory was bought by a Dubai investor in April 2002, in a 6.5 million dollar deal, and after the handing over ceremony, a representative of the company, Al Ghurair Investments, was taken around the factory to inspect the machinery.

This sounded reasonable, but wasn’t, because it appeared that the buy-out, like some others under the Parastatal Sector Reform Commission (PSRC also now defunct), wasn’t about reform at all, but more the shedding of responsibility of a looted national asset.

Others were allowed to deteriorate whilst under their wing and supposed protection, then sold off to buyers who reneged on promises to revive them.

But no promises to renege on here, since the plant purchasers intended to build a shopping mall, hotel, and houses, saying ‘’construction would start on the first of the three plots purchased”.

It was odd therefore, to view the machinery, because for the purposes of providing meaningful employment in a factory which once exported quality products that graced the shelves of London shops, they could as well have been trashed.

Superficially, this looked not so much like an investment, as a mandate to colonise a 200 acre coastal beach site, but who decided that the interests of the country could be best served by allowing it.

Also, how hard did the PRSC try to retain this only commercial linkage to the livestock sector, with incentives for buyers to restore the original function of the plant, and why were the ranches which supplied it, allowed to become de-stocked and collapse in the first place?.

A PSRC spokesman said at the time, “the government decided to change the usage of the land, away from beef canning, because of the nature of the area”.

If you’re the government of course, the nature of the area, can be anything you want it to be, just as the place where the Golden Tulip Hotel was surprisingly built at Oyster Bay, was changed from a green belt conservation space, to a large business plot!

But in the Tanganyka Packers case, the message was they’d decided on a western style enclave of retailing services, a liberalized economy sure, but for whose benefit, not the average citizen, maybe tourists…?

‘‘come to Tanzania, see how civilized we are. Our shopping mall stores have a dozen different brands of toilet paper or cornflakes, and no longer do we sell eggs just as they fall out of the hens’ bottoms, but they now come packed in little boxes…all the way from South Africa”…progress!

It’s all a long time ago, but I’m recounting it, because for the lessons to be learned, they need to be remembered. Though I’m not sure the trajectory as regards meaningful or sustainable growth, is on the right track today, whether reclaiming failed privatized public assets, or obliging deluded investors in glitzy inappropriate schemes.

Surprisingly the skeleton of the Tanganyka Packers factory is still there at Kawe, as is the old workers club, still being used.

It seems the Dubai investors scheme didn’t materialise, but there’s a vast billboard near the area, advertising something similar, which I’m told comes under the the National Housing Corporation…so glitz win out after all, a luxury development…can they next try low cost houses!

Photo caption: The Glory days...cows aplenty and somewhere to can them! Tanganyika Packers Ltd. In 1960. Once a famous factory that exported canned meat abroad, and the only one of its kind in the country, it has lain idle for decades.

In 2002, an investor bought the plant, not to revive the industry, but to construct a development on the prime beach front site, which never materialized. The government is considering re-claiming some sold off public assets, but it’s doubtful this derelict plant could ever be considered.