Poor transport networks are a huge obstacle to economic growth in Tanzania. To address this, significant money is allocated in the budget to infrastructure development. In the just-unveiled budget for 2010/11, it will receive 1.5 trillion shillings. This is about 13 percent of the entire budget, and 37 percent more than the 1.1 trillion shillings allocated in 2009/10. A good part of these resources go to road works. But how well is this money managed?

Recently the Controller and Auditor General (CAG) released the first value for money (performance) audit of road works in Tanzania, in which 10 major road projects under TANROADS’ management were audited. The audit assesses the effectiveness of the government’s systems to manage road works. This brief summarises the findings of the audit and presents the recommendations that the Controller and Auditor General has put forward to correct identified problems.

The audit concludes that the management system for road works of the Ministry of Infrastructure Development/Tanzania Roads Agency (MOID/TANROADS) does not do well in ensuring the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of road works. This leads to poor quality, delays, cost overruns and above all reduced value for money from the resources provided by tax payers. The Auditor General’s report suggests ways to better ensure that the large budgets allocated to roads will be well spent.