Bank of Baroda Boosts Arusha's 'Wall Street'

From Arusha Times
By Valentine Marc Nkwame


It was compelled to close shop in 1967 following the rather stern, Arusha Declaration strategies, under which most foreign owned businesses and companies, including financial institutions, were nationalized. Now the Bank of Baroda has just opened the first ever Arusha branch, three years after its comeback to Tanzania.

The India's international bank is intending to make a strong presence in the town where the Arusha Declaration was made. It is under this declaration that the Baroda group was forced to leave Tanzania, living practically all its assets behind. The Baroda banking operations were turned into the National Bank of Commerce and subsequently the National Micro-Finance Bank (NMB).

"Tanzania was the only missing link in our vision to form a special East African Baroda Corporate network," said the bank's global Executive Director, V. Santhana Raman. Bank of Baroda returned to Tanzania in 2004 with the opening of BOB bank of Dar es Salaam. The first Arusha branch establishment also went hand-in-hand with the inauguration of a second branch in Dar.

"After Arusha we are now eyeing Mwanza," added the Managing Director for Bank of Baroda in Tanzania, Umakant K. Bijapur. Prior to the 1967 Arusha declaration, the bank's only branch in the north was the Moshi branch.

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