This report is prepared by TERI for research and strategic-information purposes only. It is not investment, legal, tax or financial advice, and does not state the position of the Government of Tanzania, the Bank of Tanzania, the Social Security Regulatory Authority (SSRA) or any pension scheme. Recommendations are analytical proposals; estimates, targets and calculations ("TERI calculation") may change and should be independently verified, and nothing in this report should be read as advice to any pension scheme on its investment strategy or fiduciary obligations. Two source working notes give different figures for pension-fund total assets, government-securities holdings and allocation shares; this report uses the Bank of Tanzania's Financial Stability Report, December 2025, as the primary figure for total social-security-sector assets, and flags every other discrepancy in Appendix A. R-codes refer to the Tanzania Policy Reform Agenda 2026–2031 register, in particular R13 and R14.
This page follows Tanzania's Capital Market: Growing Fast, Still Shallow, which showed DSE market capitalisation passing TZS 40 trillion while remaining under 11% of GDP, and Government Securities Dominance: The Crowding-Out Problem, which explained why government securities absorb ~16–24x more than corporate bonds on outstanding stock. This report takes the single largest institutional investor in that story — Tanzania's pension sector — and asks precisely how much of its TZS 25.9 trillion in assets reaches the job-creating private sector, and what would change that.
01 — OverviewExecutive Summary
Tanzania does have a pension-to-investment gap. The country's pension and social-security funds held TZS 25.9 trillion in assets by December 2025 (Bank of Tanzania Financial Stability Report), equivalent to 12.1% of GDP and growing 21.4% in a single year — a genuinely large, fast-growing pool of long-term domestic savings. Yet a large share of it, estimated at roughly 45% of invested assets (and reported as high as over 85% in one source reviewed), sits in government securities, while equities and corporate bonds together take up well under 10% and infrastructure investment under 5%.
This is not primarily a story of pension funds making a mistake. Government securities are liquid, lower-risk, well-matched to pension funds' long-dated liabilities, and backed by the same structural advantages described in TERI's companion Crowding-Out report. The gap exists because Tanzania has not yet built enough bankable, investable alternatives — rated corporate bonds, infrastructure bonds, REITs, private-equity vehicles — for pension funds to respond to, even where appetite exists.
The gap is real money, not an abstraction. Shifting even 5% of Tanzania's TZS 24.0 trillion pension investment-asset base toward productive, bankable private and infrastructure investment would unlock roughly TZS 1.2 trillion a year in new long-term financing; a 10% shift would unlock roughly TZS 2.4 trillion — figures that should anchor the policy conversation rather than abstract calls to "diversify pension portfolios."
Closing this gap does not require forcing pension funds to take on risk they should not bear. It requires Tanzania to build the products, the project pipeline, the credit enhancement and the governance that would let a TZS 25.9 trillion pool of Tanzanians' own retirement savings do more of the work of building the country they will retire into.
Headline numbers
| Indicator | Value | Source / status |
|---|---|---|
| Social-security sub-sector total assets, Dec 2025 | TZS 25.9tn (+21.4% y/y, from TZS 21.353tn in 2024) | Bank of Tanzania Financial Stability Report, December 2025 |
| Social-security assets as share of GDP | 12.1% (2025), up from 7.6% (2024) | Bank of Tanzania Financial Stability Report, December 2025 |
| Pension investment assets (narrower measure) | TZS 24.048tn (2025), ≈88.9% of total assets | TICGL/TERI working note — close to, but not identical to, the BoT total above; see Appendix A |
| Government securities held by pension funds | ≈TZS 7.7tn (World Bank) or TZS 10.3–10.4tn (second source) — ≈26–30% of all outstanding government securities | Two TICGL/TERI working notes — see Appendix A |
| Share of pension invested assets in government securities | ≈45% (World Bank-sourced) vs 45–70% range (second source) vs 46.7% historically (BoT, 2019) | Three figures, directionally consistent — see Appendix A |
| SSRA/BoT minimum government-securities allocation guideline | ≥40% of assets (regulatory floor); actual allocation has, at times, exceeded even the regulatory ceiling on government lending | TICGL/TERI working note; historical BoT reporting (2019) found government lending above its then 10% sub-limit |
| Corporate bond market, outstanding | TZS 757.1bn (2024) → TZS 1.9–2.0tn (2025–26) | TICGL/TERI working notes; TERI's Crowding-Out report |
| Illustrative value of a 5% / 10% pension reallocation | ≈TZS 1.20tn / TZS 2.40tn in additional annual long-term financing | TERI calculation (C), based on TZS 24.048tn investment-asset base |
Read this alongside TICGL/TERI's Crowding-Out report
That report explains why government securities absorb nearly all domestic long-term savings. This one shows exactly how much of Tanzania's largest savings pool — pension assets — sits on the wrong side of that imbalance, and what a reallocation would actually unlock.
Read: Government Securities Dominance: The Crowding-Out Problem →02 — Scale1. A Fast-Growing Pool of Savings
Tanzania's social-security and pension sub-sector has expanded rapidly. Per the Bank of Tanzania's Financial Stability Report for December 2025, total assets grew 21.4% in a single year, from TZS 21.353 trillion (2024) to TZS 25.9 trillion (2025) — continuing a trend from TZS 18.834 trillion in 2023. Social-security assets now represent 12.1% of GDP, up sharply from 7.6% the year before. The Zanzibar Social Security Fund (ZSSF) grew its own net assets 22.3% to TZS 1.37 trillion over the same period.
Source: Bank of Tanzania Financial Stability Report, December 2025 (total social security sub-sector assets, mainland); GDP-share series from the same report and TICGL/TERI working notes. Reproduced exactly as prepared in the source report.
This confirms the premise behind the "pension-to-investment gap" question: Tanzania is not short of long-term domestic savings. The pension sector is now one of the largest, fastest-growing pools of investable capital in the country's financial system — alongside, and in some ways larger in absolute terms than, the entire domestic corporate bond market combined.
03 — Definition2. What Is a "Pension-to-Investment Gap"?
A pension-to-investment gap is the difference between how much capital pension funds accumulate, and how much of that capital is channelled into productive private investment — companies, infrastructure, manufacturing, housing, logistics and technology — rather than government financing alone.
The current pattern
The alternative
The question this report asks is not whether government securities belong in a pension portfolio — they clearly do, for reasons set out in Section 4 — but whether the concentration in government paper has become large enough to meaningfully limit how much of Tanzania's own long-term savings reaches its job-creating private sector.
3. The Evidence for a Gap
Persistent, documented since at least 20193.1 Where the money currently sits
Government securities take up roughly 45% of pension invested assets on the better-attested of the two figures reviewed for this report (a second source puts the figure as high as over 85%; see Appendix A). Equities and corporate bonds combined remain under 10% of the portfolio in some reporting, and infrastructure investment under 5% — despite infrastructure being, in principle, one of the closest matches available for a pension fund's long-dated liabilities.
TICGL/TERI working notes, citing World Bank and press reporting on pension allocation; "Other" is a residual (deposits, real estate, unspecified) and is not independently confirmed against a single SSRA/BoT breakdown — see Appendix A. Reproduced exactly as prepared in the source report.
3.2 This is not a new pattern
Bank of Tanzania's own financial stability reporting shows this concentration is not a recent development. As far back as the year to March 2019, government accounted for 46.7% of pension funds' total investments (Treasury bills and bonds alone making up 35.3%), and pension funds' direct lending to government had already exceeded the regulatory sub-limit in place at the time (reaching 11.4% of total investments against a 10% limit). The concentration in government paper documented in 2025–26 data is therefore a persistent structural feature of Tanzania's pension system, not a new or temporary shift.
3.3 The corporate market is too small to absorb a shift even if it happened
TERI's companion Crowding-Out report found Tanzania's corporate bond market, though growing quickly in percentage terms (TZS 757.1 billion in 2024 to roughly TZS 1.9–2.0 trillion in 2025–26), remains between 16 and 24 times smaller than government securities on outstanding stock, and the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange had only 28 listed companies as of September 2025. The gap, in other words, is not only about where pension funds choose to put their money — it is also about how little investable private-sector capacity currently exists for that money to go to.
04 — Reframing4. Is Government Securities Exposure Itself the Problem?
Consistent with TERI's companion Crowding-Out report, government securities serve a genuine, legitimate function in a pension portfolio:
- High liquidity, allowing funds to meet benefit payments as they fall due
- Lower risk than most available corporate alternatives
- A close match to pension funds' own long-dated liabilities
- Predictable income for actuarial planning
- A basis for asset-liability matching
- A benchmark yield curve that the rest of the capital market is priced against
The right question is therefore not "why do pension funds hold government bonds?" but:
Is the allocation to government securities now large enough that it is crowding out diversification and starving productive private-sector financing of capital it would otherwise receive?
On the evidence in Section 3 — a persistent ~45%+ concentration, maintained for at least six years, against an equity-and-corporate-bond share under 10% — the answer TERI reaches is yes.
05 — Root Causes5. Why the Gap Persists: Five Reinforcing Causes
| Cause | How it keeps the gap open |
|---|---|
| Scarcity of investable alternatives | Tanzania has too few investment-grade corporate bonds, infrastructure bonds, municipal bonds, liquid REITs, private-equity funds, venture-capital funds, asset-backed securities or pooled SME-finance vehicles for pension funds to diversify into, even where mandates would allow it |
| Favourable risk-adjusted returns on government paper | A corporate bond may offer a higher coupon, but once default, disclosure, liquidity and governance risk are priced in, a government bond can still look like the better risk-adjusted choice — a rational portfolio decision given what is actually on offer |
| A weak bankable-project pipeline | Pension funds cannot invest in an idea; they need a completed feasibility study, financial model, revenue stream, risk allocation, environmental approval, legal structure and repayment mechanism — and Tanzania's project-preparation pipeline (TERI's Gold Dependence report put PPP preparation funding at roughly TZS 1–2bn a year against a benchmark near TZS 420bn) remains far too thin to supply this at scale |
| Portfolio-management capacity and governance | The World Bank has found that some of Tanzania's largest pension funds have portfolio-management capability, performance and liquidity practices below their potential — pushing funds toward assets that are simpler to hold and monitor, like government bonds and real estate, rather than assets that require specialised credit and investment analysis |
| Banking-sector dominance of the wider financial system | A 2025 assessment (TAIEX) found Tanzania's financial market is still characterised by banking-sector dominance and limited capital-market liquidity and products — reinforcing reliance on bank loans by companies and on government securities by pension funds, on both sides of the same underdeveloped market |
06 — Impact6. What This Costs the Economy
6.1 Private-sector financing stays shallow
Companies that need long-term capital for factories, hotels, logistics facilities, technology, warehouses, hospitals, schools, energy projects or agro-processing plants cannot access the scale of pension capital that, in principle, exists to fund exactly this kind of long-horizon investment. Many instead rely on short-term bank loans to fund long-term projects — a maturity mismatch that raises financial risk across the corporate sector.
6.2 Fewer jobs than the capital pool could support
Government-bond investment supports public expenditure but does not directly generate employment the way manufacturing, construction, tourism, logistics, digital services or agro-processing do. Every year pension savings remain concentrated in government paper rather than flowing toward these sectors is a year Tanzania does not use its own long-term capital to build durable jobs.
6.3 The capital market itself stays shallow
TERI's companion Capital Market report found Tanzania's market capitalisation at roughly 10.85% of GDP — far below regional peers. Active pension-fund participation in corporate bonds, equities and infrastructure securities would directly raise turnover, improve price discovery, lower the cost of capital for issuers, attract foreign institutional interest, and strengthen governance expectations across the market. The World Bank has specifically noted that Tanzania's pension funds tend toward a buy-and-hold strategy, which, however prudent at the individual-fund level, further suppresses the secondary-market liquidity the wider capital market needs.
6.4 An opportunity cost, not a loss
None of this means government-bond returns are poor, or that pension funds have made an error. It means the allocation needs to be judged against the alternative uses of that capital — productive companies, export sectors, renewable energy, logistics, industrial parks, affordable housing and digital infrastructure — and against Tanzania's own long-term productivity, not evaluated in isolation.
07 — Scale7. How Large Is the Opportunity?
Using the TZS 24.048 trillion pension investment-asset base reported for 2025, a modest 5% reallocation toward qualifying infrastructure or productive corporate instruments would represent roughly TZS 1.20 trillion in additional long-term financing a year; a 10% reallocation would represent roughly TZS 2.40 trillion. These are illustrative order-of-magnitude figures, not GDP-impact estimates — the actual effect on output and jobs would depend on project quality, import content, implementation capacity and repayment performance — but they show that even a modest, carefully sequenced shift would represent a genuinely significant new source of domestic development finance, larger in a single year than Tanzania's entire corporate bond market has reached after several years of rapid percentage growth.
TERI illustrative calculation: 5%/10% of TZS 24.048tn in pension investment assets (2025). Not a GDP-impact estimate — actual effect depends on project quality, import content, implementation capacity and repayment performance. Reproduced exactly as prepared in the source report.
08 — Comparators8. International Comparisons
| Market | What's happening | Lesson for Tanzania | Caveat |
|---|---|---|---|
| South Africa | Regulation 28 of the Pension Funds Act was amended, effective January 2023, to raise the ceiling on retirement-fund infrastructure investment to 45% of assets (up from a much lower effective level previously) — but notably, this same regulatory framework exempts government-guaranteed debt from the single-entity concentration limit that applies to every other asset class. | A regulator can deliberately expand pension funds' permitted exposure to infrastructure and productive assets through an explicit, risk-based ceiling — but South Africa's own rules show that even reform-minded regulators often continue to treat government debt as structurally exempt from diversification limits, which is itself a form of built-in crowding-out tolerance worth naming explicitly. | South Africa's reform rides on top of a deep JSE, an established credit-rating ecosystem, professional fund managers and strong disclosure — Tanzania cannot adopt the percentage alone without building the surrounding ecosystem (TERI's Capital Market and Crowding-Out reports set out what that requires). |
| Kenya | Government securities made up roughly 52.5% of Kenya's KES 2.81 trillion pension-asset pool as of mid-2025 — a higher concentration than Tanzania's — prompting public calls from Kenyan officials to "unlock" this "idle" capital; the Kenya Pension Funds Investment Consortium (KEPFIC) already exists as a dedicated vehicle for channelling pooled pension capital into productive investment. | Tanzania's gap is not unique in the region — even Kenya, with a more developed capital market overall, has a higher government-securities concentration in pension assets than Tanzania's estimated ≈45%. A dedicated pooling vehicle (KEPFIC-style) is one concrete mechanism Tanzania could adapt. | Kenya's reform conversation (a proposed "two-pot" system, quarterly reporting, mandatory vetting of fund managers) is still in progress as of this research round, not a proven completed success. |
| Mauritius | Mauritius built financial services into a genuine export sector, contributing roughly 13.3% of GDP in 2024, using pension and institutional capital as part of a broader strategy that included fund management, custodial services and cross-border investment platforms, not domestic government bonds alone. | Pension capital does not have to be viewed only as a source of domestic government or corporate financing — it can also seed a financial-services export capability, consistent with TERI's Services Receipts and Capital Market reports. | Mauritius's model depends on predictable regulation and international investor access built over decades; it is a longer-term aspiration for Tanzania, not a near-term template. |
Government Securities as a Share of Pension Assets: Tanzania vs Peers
09 — Recommendations9. Policy Recommendations, 2026–2031
Recommendations are cross-referenced to the reform register in the Tanzania Policy Reform Agenda 2026–2031 (R1–R25) and to TERI's companion Crowding-Out and Capital Market reports, where a matching reform already exists.
1Do not mandate pension funds into private assets
- Forcing pension funds to buy specific private assets risks member benefits and would substitute one form of political direction for another.
- Reform should instead be risk-based, independently governed, and demand-led — giving funds the option and the investable products, not a quota.
2Build the products pension funds can actually buy
- Prioritise infrastructure bonds, green and social bonds, corporate bonds, REITs, pooled SME bond facilities, project-finance vehicles, mortgage-backed securities, and private-equity and venture-capital funds — the same product gap identified in TERI's Crowding-Out and Capital Market reports.
3Build the project pipeline
- Fund a genuine project-preparation facility (R11 cross-reference) covering energy, water, housing, transport, logistics, agro-processing, health, education and digital infrastructure, so pension funds have bankable, appraised projects to evaluate — not concepts.
4Use credit enhancement to make projects investable
- Partial guarantees, first-loss capital, viability-gap funding, escrow structures and revenue guarantees can make infrastructure and corporate projects investable for risk-averse pension funds without government bearing the entire project risk.
5Strengthen pension-fund governance and capacity
- Independent investment committees, public portfolio disclosure, benchmarked performance (net of inflation and fees), actuarial stress testing, conflict-of-interest controls, professional fund management and regular asset-liability studies — addressing the capacity gap the World Bank has identified.
6Reconcile and publish a single allocation figure
- SSRA and the Bank of Tanzania should jointly publish a single, authoritative, quarterly figure for pension-fund allocation across government securities, equities, corporate bonds, infrastructure and other assets — ending the current situation in which credible sources cite pension government-securities exposure anywhere from 45% to over 85% of assets.
7Build regional capital-market links
- Explore EAC/SADC cross-listing, regional pension-investment arrangements and a Tanzanian equivalent of Kenya's KEPFIC pooling vehicle, so Tanzanian pension capital can also participate in regional infrastructure and corporate opportunities, not only domestic government securities.
"Tanzania's pension sector is not failing its members by holding government securities — it is responding rationally to a market that has not yet built enough investable alternatives. A TZS 25.9 trillion pool of Tanzanians' own retirement savings, growing more than 21% a year, is large enough on its own to materially change the trajectory of Tanzania's capital-market depth and private-sector financing if even a modest share were redirected. The task is not to force that shift. It is to build the products, the project pipeline and the governance that would let pension funds choose it."
— TICGL / Tanzania Economic Research Institute (TERI)
10 — Conclusion10. Conclusion
Tanzania does have a pension-to-investment gap. The country's pension and social-security funds hold TZS 25.9 trillion in assets — 12.1% of GDP, growing over 21% in a single year — and this pool is large enough, on its own, to materially change the trajectory of Tanzania's capital-market depth and private-sector financing if even a modest share were redirected. Yet a persistent concentration of roughly 45% or more of invested assets in government securities, a pattern documented as far back as 2019 and still present in 2025–26 data, means that most of this capital finances government rather than the companies, infrastructure and industries that create jobs.
The gap is not primarily a failure of pension-fund decision-making. It is, as TERI's companion Crowding-Out report argues for the capital market more broadly, a failure of market structure: government securities remain the safest, most liquid, best-understood option available, while investable alternatives — rated corporate bonds, infrastructure bonds, REITs, bankable projects — remain too scarce for pension funds to diversify into even where they might otherwise choose to. Closing this gap over the next five years does not require forcing pension funds to take on risk they should not bear. It requires Tanzania to build the products, the project pipeline, the credit enhancement and the governance that would let a TZS 25.9 trillion pool of Tanzanians' own retirement savings do more of the work of building the country they will retire into.
11 — Data QualityAppendix A: Data Reconciliation and Gaps
| Issue | Figures that differ | Recommended action |
|---|---|---|
| Total pension/social-security assets, 2025 | TZS 25.9tn (Bank of Tanzania Financial Stability Report, Dec 2025, confirmed via two press sources) vs TZS 27.044tn (one TICGL/TERI working note, source and exact date not specified) | Use the BoT Financial Stability Report figure (TZS 25.9tn) as primary; the working note's figure may reflect a later 2026 update or a different scope (e.g., including Zanzibar) and should be re-verified against the next published BoT report |
| Government securities held by pension funds | ≈TZS 7.7tn (World Bank, cited in one working note) vs TZS 10.3–10.4tn (second working note, source not specified) | Treat the World Bank-attributed figure as provisionally more defensible pending a single reconciled SSRA/BoT statistic; do not average the two |
| Share of invested assets in government securities | ≈45% (World Bank-sourced) vs 45–70% range (second working note) vs 46.7% (BoT, year to March 2019, for historical context) | All three point the same direction (a large majority concentration); use ≈45% as the primary current estimate but flag the wide range when citing externally |
| Private-sector credit growth, 2025 | 23.5% (Bank of Tanzania Financial Stability Report, 2025, confirmed in this research round) — this also resolves a discrepancy flagged in TERI's companion Crowding-Out report between a ≈15–18% figure and a ≈23% figure in two earlier working notes | Use 23.5% (BoT FSR 2025) as the authoritative figure going forward; earlier TERI reports in this series should be read alongside this update |
| Equity and infrastructure allocation shares (Section 3.1 chart) | "<10%" for equities/corporate bonds and "<5%" for infrastructure are approximate figures from TICGL/TERI working notes, not independently confirmed against a single SSRA/BoT breakdown in this research round | Request the full SSRA or BoT asset-allocation breakdown by instrument before using precise percentages externally |
12 — SourcesAppendix B: Sources
This page is built directly from TERI's report "Where Are Tanzanians' Pension Savings Going?" (October 2026), the third report in TERI's capital-market series, following Tanzania's Capital Market: Growing Fast, Still Shallow and Government Securities Dominance: The Crowding-Out Problem.
- TICGL/TERI, Tanzania Business Report, September 2026; Tanzania Policy Reform Agenda 2026–2031.
- TICGL/TERI, Tanzania's Capital Market: Growing Fast, Still Shallow and Government Securities Dominance: The Crowding-Out Problem (companion reports, Sep–Oct 2026).
- TICGL/TERI, Gold Dependence Policy Report, Gold Is Finance Not Growth, and Services Receipts reports (companion analyses, September 2026).
- TICGL/TERI, two working research notes on the pension-to-investment gap supplied for this analysis (headline pension statistics, allocation data, international comparisons, policy framework).
- Bank of Tanzania, Financial Stability Report, December 2025, as reported by The Guardian/IPP Media ("Social security sector strengthens financial muscle amid rising investments and membership growth") and TanzaniaInvest ("Tanzania Banking Assets Up 23.8%, Capital Markets Up 35.1%, Social Security Up 21.4%, Insurance Up 6.8% in 2025").
- The Guardian/IPP Media, "Social security size up 13pc, bolstering financial stability" (Jul 2025), citing Bank of Tanzania Financial Stability Report 2024.
- The Citizen, "BoT: Pension funds' lending to govt goes beyond set limit" (historical, year to March 2019 data).
- World Bank, pension-fund holdings of government securities and portfolio-management capacity assessment, as cited in TICGL/TERI working notes.
- South African National Treasury, amendments to Regulation 28 of the Pension Funds Act (2022, effective January 2023).
- Serrari Group / Financial Literacy, "Kenya's Ksh2.81 Trillion Pension Pot Is Sitting Idle — Duale Wants That to Change" (2025–26), citing Retirement Benefits Authority (RBA) data.
Request the Full Report or a Briefing
This page summarises TICGL/TERI's pension-to-investment gap report. Institutions, investors, government agencies and development partners may request the full report or a tailored briefing — including the reallocation-scenario model and a reconciled allocation estimate — directly from TERI.
✉️ Request via economist@ticgl.com →13 — Quick AnswersFrequently Asked Questions
How much money does Tanzania's pension sector hold?
Tanzania's social-security and pension sub-sector held TZS 25.9 trillion in assets by December 2025, equivalent to 12.1% of GDP, up from 7.6% a year earlier. This represents 21.4% growth in a single year, from TZS 21.353 trillion in 2024, continuing a trend from TZS 18.834 trillion in 2023 (Bank of Tanzania Financial Stability Report, December 2025).
Does Tanzania have a pension-to-investment gap?
Yes. Roughly 45% of pension invested assets sit in government securities (one source puts this as high as over 85%), while equities and corporate bonds combined remain under 10% and infrastructure investment under 5%. This concentration is not new — Bank of Tanzania reporting shows government accounted for 46.7% of pension investments as far back as the year to March 2019, with pension lending to government at times exceeding its regulatory sub-limit.
Is it a mistake for pension funds to hold so much government debt?
Not primarily. Government securities are liquid, lower-risk, well-matched to pension funds' long-dated liabilities, and provide the benchmark yield curve the rest of the market is priced against — all legitimate reasons to hold them. The gap exists mainly because Tanzania has not yet built enough bankable, investable alternatives — rated corporate bonds, infrastructure bonds, REITs, private-equity vehicles — for pension funds to diversify into, even where appetite and mandates would allow it.
How much new financing could a pension reallocation unlock?
Using the TZS 24.048 trillion pension investment-asset base reported for 2025, a modest 5% reallocation toward qualifying infrastructure or productive corporate instruments would represent roughly TZS 1.20 trillion in additional long-term financing a year; a 10% reallocation would represent roughly TZS 2.40 trillion — larger in a single year than Tanzania's entire corporate bond market has reached after several years of rapid growth.
What would close Tanzania's pension-to-investment gap?
TERI's seven recommendations: do not mandate pension funds into private assets by quota; build the investable products (infrastructure bonds, REITs, pooled SME facilities, private equity/venture funds); build a genuine bankable-project pipeline; use credit enhancement to make projects investable; strengthen pension-fund governance and portfolio-management capacity; reconcile and publish a single authoritative allocation figure; and build regional capital-market links such as a Tanzanian equivalent of Kenya's KEPFIC pooling vehicle.
Muhtasari kwa Kiswahili
Pengo la Pensheni hadi Uwekezaji: Kwa Nini Mfuko wa TZS Trilioni 25.9 wa Pensheni za Tanzania Haufadhili Uwekezaji wa Uzalishaji? — Mifuko ya hifadhi ya jamii na pensheni ya Tanzania ilishikilia mali za TZS trilioni 25.9 ifikapo Desemba 2025 — sawa na 12.1% ya GDP, ikikua kwa 21.4% ndani ya mwaka mmoja. Hii ni akiba kubwa ya muda mrefu ya ndani. Lakini sehemu kubwa yake, takribani 45% au zaidi, inakaa kwenye hati fungani za serikali, wakati hisa na hati fungani za makampuni kwa pamoja ni chini ya 10%, na miundombinu ni chini ya 5%.
Je, Tanzania ina pengo la pensheni hadi uwekezaji? Ndiyo. Takribani 45% ya mali za pensheni ziko kwenye hati fungani za serikali (chanzo kimoja kinaonyesha hadi zaidi ya 85%). Hii si jambo jipya — takwimu za BoT zinaonyesha serikali ilichukua 46.7% ya uwekezaji wa pensheni tangu mwaka 2019, na mikopo ya pensheni kwa serikali wakati mwingine ilizidi kiwango cha kisheria kilichowekwa.
Je, ni kosa la mifuko ya pensheni? Hapana, si hasa. Hati fungani za serikali zina ukwasi mkubwa, hatari ndogo, zinaendana vizuri na madeni ya muda mrefu ya mifuko ya pensheni, na ni msingi wa riba inayotumika sokoni lote. Tatizo ni kwamba Tanzania bado haijajenga njia mbadala za kutosha za kuwekeza — hati fungani za makampuni zenye ukadiriaji, hati fungani za miundombinu, REITs, mifuko ya private equity — ambazo mifuko ya pensheni ingeweza kuwekeza ikiwa zingekuwepo.
Fursa ni kiasi gani? Kutumia msingi wa mali za uwekezaji za pensheni za TZS trilioni 24.048 (2025), kuhamisha 5% tu kuelekea miundombinu au uwekezaji wa makampuni wenye tija kungeweza kufungua takribani TZS trilioni 1.20 kwa mwaka ya ufadhili mpya wa muda mrefu; kuhamisha 10% kungefungua takribani TZS trilioni 2.40 — kiasi kikubwa zaidi ya soko lote la hati fungani za makampuni la Tanzania kwa sasa.
Sababu tano zinazoshikilia pengo hili: (i) uhaba wa njia mbadala za uwekezaji; (ii) faida nzuri ya hatari-dhidi-ya-mapato kwenye hati za serikali; (iii) mfumo dhaifu wa miradi inayoweza kukopesheka; (iv) uwezo mdogo wa usimamizi wa portfolio kwenye baadhi ya mifuko; (v) utawala wa sekta ya benki kwenye mfumo mzima wa kifedha.
Mapendekezo ya TICGL/TERI (hatua saba): (i) kutolazimisha mifuko ya pensheni kuwekeza kwenye mali binafsi kwa kiwango cha lazima; (ii) kujenga bidhaa ambazo mifuko inaweza kununua (hati fungani za miundombinu, REITs, mifuko ya SME, private equity); (iii) kujenga mfumo wa miradi inayoweza kukopesheka; (iv) kutumia uimarishaji wa mikopo (dhamana za sehemu, first-loss capital) kufanya miradi iwe na uwezekano wa kuwekeza; (v) kuimarisha utawala na uwezo wa mifuko ya pensheni; (vi) kupatanisha na kuchapisha takwimu moja rasmi ya mgao; (vii) kujenga miunganiko ya kikanda ya soko la mitaji (mfano wa KEPFIC ya Kenya).
Hitimisho: Pengo hili si hasa kosa la maamuzi ya mifuko ya pensheni. Ni kushindwa kwa muundo wa soko — hati fungani za serikali zinabaki chaguo salama zaidi, lenye ukwasi zaidi, na linaloeleweka zaidi, wakati njia mbadala za kuwekeza bado ni chache mno. Kufunga pengo hili hakuhitaji kulazimisha mifuko ya pensheni kuchukua hatari ambayo haipaswi kuibeba. Kinachohitajika ni Tanzania kujenga bidhaa, mfumo wa miradi, uimarishaji wa mikopo, na utawala bora utakaoruhusu mfuko wa TZS trilioni 25.9 wa akiba za Watanzania wenyewe kufanya kazi zaidi ya kujenga nchi watakayostaafu ndani yake.
- Mali za hifadhi ya jamii: TZS trilioni 25.9 (Des 2025), 12.1% ya GDP, +21.4% kwa mwaka
- Sehemu kwenye hati za serikali: ≈45% (hadi zaidi ya 85% kwa chanzo kingine)
- Hisa na hati fungani za makampuni kwa pamoja: chini ya 10%
- Thamani ya mabadiliko ya 5%/10%: TZS trilioni 1.2–2.4 kwa mwaka (hesabu ya TERI)
Chanzo: TICGL/TERI, ripoti ya Pengo la Pensheni hadi Uwekezaji, Oktoba 2026. Kwa maelezo zaidi wasiliana na: economist@ticgl.com.