Sello Motseta
11th February 2020
Alliance for Progressives(AP) leader in parliament Wynter Mmolotsi has expressed disappointment with the courts for refusing to thoroughly examine allegations of impropriety during the elections on the basis of technicalities and criticized Government for poor stewardship of state owned enterprises.
AP leader has also used his response to the budget speech to reject the Government monopoly given to the badly run Botswana Meat Commission(BMC), complaining farmers and Europeans were holding Botswana to ransom whilst calling for managed competition.
“Our proposal for a managed competition system means a regulatory body could be erected to regulate hygiene, fairness in cattle purchase even from forgotten places and price(this regulatory body could easily be housed under an existing one if necessary). This body would categorize types of exporters and prescribe the number of players in each category for licensing,” said Mmolotsi.
He said, “This will encourage companies to compete and those who perform poorly because of bad management will not unduly prejudice farmers.”
Mmolotsi complained about impending health crises with shortages of medicines, long queues, patients sleeping on the floor and long waiting periods to see specialists. Government also appeared to have made a U turn on its decision to reopen the BCL and build an electric car.
Whilst there was usual talk of the need for economic transformation, macroeconomic stability, greater socio economic inclusion, improved quality of public services and climate change it seemed business as usual with very little specifics and no targets to enable evaluation of performance. AP advocated the development of major infrastructure projects like roads, rail to create jobs.
Mmolotsi stressed need for 24 hour clinic in Francistown to ease congestion on Nyangagwe hospital and maintained that Botswana needs to focus more on artificial intelligence whilst apportioning more of the budget on technical and vocational education and training.
The budget speech delivered on the 3rd February 2020 by Finance and Economic Development Minister Thapelo Matsheka has prioritized export led growth, more efficient government spending and financing whilst simultaneously building human capital to serve the needs of a globalizing world.
This occurs as Botswana foreign exchange reserves decreased slightly to P70.6billion in November 2019 from P74.5billion in November 2018. Statistics Botswana released its first ever quarterly labour force survey results for the three months of July to September 2019, show an unemployment rate of 20.7% with official figures showing that the economy was only growing about 4% annually.
State entities have been given a subvention of P4.9billion in the current financial year despite the fact that they continue to perform poorly with Air Botswana, Botswana Meat Commission, National development Bank and Botswana Railway amongst the chief culprits.
Government will be appointing a management company to run the underperforming BMC and convert the Botswana Meat Commission(BMC) into a company under the Companies act eliminating its monopoly, with the approval of the BMC Transition Bill in parliament in august 2019 and the repeal of the BMC Act.
The Government will also be developing a citizen economic empowerment law to enhance citizenship participation in economic development. But union leaders appeared to believe job creation was not given sufficient with indications emerging the funding for infrastructure was slowing down.
The Botswana Federation of Public, Private and Parastatal Sector Unions (BOFEPUSU) President, Johannes Tshukudu acknowledged Government’s laudable ambition to transform economy of Botswana.
“When you talk of transformation you need to improve efficiency of Government in the provision of goods and services. He talked of improvement of capacity building of public workers to improve efficiency of services to public but was thin on details,” said Tshukudu.
He said, “The issue of job creation was not clearly spelt out with a noticeable slowdown in public funding for infrastructure development. Budget allocations were different. Education budget was reduced with lands and water allocated largest portion of budget.”
Tshukudu also expressed concern at the allocation of a large portion of the budget by Finance Minister to the Botswana Defence Force(BDF) for what appeared to be arms and not long standing issues of staff housing, conditions of service, skills development and discipline.
