Assessing Financial Distress For Listed Manufacturing Industries In Tanzania

ABSTRACT

Following independence in 1961 the government of Tanzania invested heavily in Tanzania’s manufacturing sector allowing the sector to grow smoothly. Despite improvement in macro-economic stability in the 2000s, the performance of Tanzania’s manufacturing sector remains unimpressive. Manufacturing industries have received widespread public attention especially after Altman (1968) developed a Z-score model of measuring financial distress of the firms. However, most of the researches have been carried out in industrially developed countries and very few studies have been conducted in developing countries.To address these challenges, a study was conducted from all listed domestic manufacturing industries in Tanzania in order to assess their financial health. The data were captured from Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange (DSE) annual financial statements covered a five years period, from 2010-2014. The data were analyzed using Altman’s Z-scores (1983). The findings have shown that two manufacturing firms out of six are not financially good and their Z-scores predict that they are likely to be bankruptcy. The Z-score for the other four firms predict that they are non-bankruptcy suggesting that their financial healthy are good. The findings of this study provide warning signal to managers of the firms to make remedial actions before it is too late. It also provide signal to investors to take early precaution before the situation become worse. It is recommended that it is better for the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchanges to use the signals from our findings to control the targeted firms and suggest solutions to them