Recent economic growth in Tanzania has not been matched by a corresponding reduction in poverty when compared with similar episode of growth in countries such as Uganda, Ghana, etc. This has raised heated debate, whereby some analysts argue that problem lies on the GDP is compiled, and other on the validity of Household Budget Survey (HBS) data. This paper contributes to that debate by  analyzing the distribution of upper tail observation using he Generalized Pareto Distributions show that HBS 2007 is characterized by extreme values of per capita expenditure when compares to 2001.