In 1974, after a nationwide party referendum, the Tanzanian government announced that the capital would be moved from Dar es Salaam to a more central location to create significant social and economic improvements for the central region and to centralise the capital within the country. The cost was estimated at £186 million and envisaged to take 10 years. The site, the Dodoma region, had been looked at as a potential new capital as early as 1915 by the then colonial power Germany, in 1932 by the British as a League of Nations mandate and again in the post-independence National Assembly in 1961 and 1966.