The effects of Covid-19 Pandemic on the Extractive Private Sector Firms in Tanzania

Tanzania has abundant natural resources potential to provide means for inclusive and sustainable private sector development. This paper assesses levels of risks and impact of Covid-19 on the private sector production systems, employment and commodity prices in the extractive sectors. The assessment is founded on the small and open macro-economic production model that assumes production systems, employment and product prices are main policy targets, well behaved and endogenous variables; determined simultaneously in the complex domestic and global social economic systems. Both secondary and primary data and information are used for the empirical risk analysis. Data and policy analysis use visual data discovery, prescriptive and predictive analytics detect patterns or structures in data sets that seem at first sight impenetrable.

The primary data analysis suggests that there is a high health risk and negative effects of the covid-19 pandemic on the private sector production systems, employment and commodity prices in the extractive sectors. Secondary data reveals that there have been significant risks and negative effects on the gold production and petroleum importation patterns during first and second Covid-19 pandemic in 2020/2021. There are also high level of risks and negative effects in the use of human resources. The domestic gold mining product price patterns were somehow stable since the domestic product prices were determined competitively by global extractive product prices with given domestic extractive production techniques. The levels of risks and effects on the domestic prices of the oil and gas sector have been high and unstable. The patterns and rate of change of domestic gold production quantities and prices in percentage before and during the Covid-19 were observed to be similar and stable throughout the sample period.

The paper recommends that in order to minimize the risks and negative effects of Covid-19, Tanzania should particularly aim at maximizing private sector productions, effective use of workers; and ensuring that domestic extractive sector products and commodity price systems are efficient and stable. The specific objectives are; ensuring stable and increasing gold production activities; maintaining optimal petroleum importation and supplies; optimal uses of human resource, employment and labour productivity; stable domestic gold mining product and price patterns; stable, fair and competitive domestic prices of oil and gas sector and to ensure continuous price and quantity stabilities.