General Budget Support in Tanzania: Implications of late disbursements for service delivery

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to analyze late disbursements for service delivery by focusing on donors’ General Budget Support disbursement to Tanzania and on the intergovernmental money flows in Tanzania.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors examined empirical analysis using statistics of intergovernmental transfers in Tanzania.

Findings

This paper shows that such center-local transfers are significantly correlated with the timing of local government expenditures in general and health expenditures in particular. It also shows that development expenditures are more affected than recurrent expenditures by delays in the transfer.

Practical implications

In order to improve service delivery on the ground, the transfers from donors to the central government and from the central government to local governments need to be timely.

Originality/value

The authors examined empirical analysis using statistics of intergovernmental transfers in Tanzania so as to see whether timing of transfers matters or not, which has not been considered thus far.

Citation

Furukawa, M. and Takahata, J. (2018), "General Budget Support in Tanzania: Implications of late disbursements for service delivery", African Journal of Economic and Management Studies, Vol. 9 No. 4, pp. 477-491. https://doi.org/10.1108/AJEMS-07-2017-0170