Tanzania takes lessons from Zimbabwe
in [Physics]
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From: as on 14 Feb 2010 11:05 Tanzania takes lessons from Zimbabwe http://www.thestandard.co.zw/ Saturday, 13 February 2010 13:49 A four-member delegation from Tanzania is in Zimbabwe to study how the country administers the Aids levy. Zimbabwe has used the National Aids Trust Fund (NATF) - funded through the levy that came into place in 2000 to implement one of the most successful campaigns against the pandemic. The Tanzaanian delegation, being hosted by the National Aids Council (NAC), arrived on Sunday and has held a series of consultative meetings with NAC, Zimbabwe Revenue Authority, ministries of Finance and Health and Child Welfare, the Zimbabwe Aids Network (ZAN), the Zimbabwe Business Council on Aids (ZBCA), among other Aids service organisations. The East African country is exploring ways to broaden its domestic funding for its HIV and Aids programmes and is consulting Southern African Community (Sadc) countries that have developed their own home grown interventions. Tanzania Aids Commission director of finance, administration and resource mobilization Bengt Issa heads the delegation. The delegation also has Beldon Chaula, a principal research officer in the Tanzanian Revenue Authority, Tadeo Augustine, a Policy analyst in the Tanzanian ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs and Deo Mulalemwa, an independent consultant. Issa said the study would help them develop sustainable domestic funding mechanisms to reduce their dependence on donor funding. "We have huge funding gaps in our HIV and Aids response," she said. "Ninety five percent of our funding is from donors and we feel this is not sustainable. "We need to explore ways in which we can harness local resources and that is the reason why we are visiting Zimbabwe to learn how the Aids Levy, which has been documented as a best regional practice by Sadc, has been administered and also look at the impact it has made." The delegation had closed door meetings with the National Aids Council management, the Aids and TB Unit under the ministry of Health and Child Welfare, ZAN and ZBCA. The delegation also visited health institutions in Mashonaland Central to appreciate the impact of HIV and Aids in a rural environment. The visit by the Tanzanians comes at a time when Zimbabwe, which also has huge funding gaps and is dependent on donor support-particularly from the Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria and the Expanded Support Programme (ESP), is exploring the possibility of collecting the Aids Levy through the Value Added Tax system. Under the current dispensation, only people in formal employment and the corporate sector contribute three percent of taxable income on Pay AS You Earn and Corporate Tax respectively. Fifty percent statutorily goes towards treatment while the other half covers costs for other interventions. Nothing is being harnessed from the informal sector where huge transactions occur. This has left a small fraction of the population, which is not well paid, bearing the burden of the pandemic. The Aids Levy, which is the only domestic source of revenue for the HIV and Aids response, is thus expected to fund prevention, treatment, care and support and mitigation programmes, coordination, administration, monitoring and evaluation, among other emerging needs. BY OUR STAFF
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