level and include top government officials, such as the President, Ministers and Members of Parliament, who visit various parts of the country to engage in dialogue and consultations with stakeholders, including ordinary citizens, with a view to more effectively addressing national needs in an inclusive manner. This is a modern-day version of the “barazza process” - a traditional form of meetings convened to promote dialogue and arrive at a consensus. The annual budget, Public Expenditure Review, as well as the Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability Review (PEFAR) all go through these consultative processes. 549. The CSAR also highlights the process of making macroeconomic projections and forecasts, the key underlying assumptions, as well as the key steps involved in the planning process. It notes that Tanzania implemented IMF-supported programs for over two decades. During this time, macroeconomic projection methods were dominated by the IMF’s financial programming framework. As a result, a large number of technical staff involved in policy formulation received financial programming training. So far the framework has served the country well as generally, over the past five years or so, projections were attained, to a reasonable degree. It goes further to present macroeconomic projections for both the Mainland and Zanzibar, and notes how important it is for those projections to be accurate to sustain credibility. 550. Steps taken by the Zanzibar Government to make the macroeconomic framework sound and supportive of sustainable development include: • Ensuring that Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) implement activities according to MKUZA targets; • Improved and strengthened statistical units in MDAs to ensure that they provide timely and reliable data; • Empowerment and strengthening of the Office of the Chief Government Statistician (OCGS) for accurate and reliable data provision; • An empowered national M&E Unit under MKUZA regular and sound analyses of the activities undertaken; • M&E Units of MDAs that analyze their activities and report their findings on a quarterly basis; and, • MDA activities implemented under MKUZA mainstream MDGs. 551. Survey results show that households were generally of the opinion that there is transparency and accountability in economic policies (54.7 per cent and 69.6 per cent on Mainland and Zanzibar respectively), and experts were of the opinion that the level of transparency is moderate (37.9 per cent) for Mainland and low (40 per cent) for Zanzibar. Transparency in public administration was enhanced through a number of measures such as publishing the report of the Controller and Auditor General (CAG). 552. Despite the fact that there are still challenges, the APRM assessment survey results for the Mainland show that experts considered reliability of the statistics (as inputs to or output from policy processes) as being fair (48.3 per cent of respondents). The challenges that remain nevertheless revolve around the multiple institutions that need to be better coordinated for improved efficiency. 553. In Zanzibar, a number of key measures were taken in terms of legislation, policies and programs, institutional development and resource allocation for effective and transparent government economic policy delivery. The measures include involving a broad spectrum of stakeholders in various policy formulation and budget processes. The Government of Zanzibar has collaborative arrangements at local authority level for economic policy and programme implementation. District authorities undertake activities related to different sectors at district and lower levels. It is also noted that national projects and programmes are rarely abandoned. Challenges highlighted include a lack of absorptive capacity; the slow district level disbursement processes and delays in submitting periodic reports. 554. The APRM assessment survey shows that experts are of the opinion that Zanzibar has fairly reliable government economic policies (60 per cent of respondents). As far as independent advice is concerned, 63 per cent of the experts surveyed acknowledged this as applicable on the Mainland. However, in Zanzibar, 73 per cent of the experts surveyed stated that independent advice was rarely taken into account. 119