31 Mar 2014

The agriculture sector has over the past years shown constant performance contributing about three per cent to GDP, Parliament has been told.

Responding to a question, Assistant Minister of Finance and Development Planning, Mr Vincent Seretse said the agriculture sector had various challenges in the past years.

Mr Seretse, who was responding on behalf of Minister of Agriculture, said the country had experienced two consecutive years of drought that impacted the sector negatively. “There were also outbreaks of pests and diseases that also impacted the sector negatively”, he said.

Notwithstanding the above, Minister Seretse said considerable effort has been made to increase the performance of the sector.

These, he said, included zoning the country according to agro- ecological zones based on the potential of production, clustering and improving the management of agricultural resources through use of improved technologies from researched initiatives.

He cited shortage of transport, extension personnel as well as funds as some of the challenges that the ministry was facing. He said, however, the ministry continued to support farmers in all sub sectors and the agriculture sector remains vibrant and continues to maintain Batswana livelihoods.

He told the house that the Kgalagadi and Ghanzi districts that are referred to in Statistics Botswana as Western region agro – ecologically, have the potential to do well in livestock production and did well in the livestock sub sector in the past three years.

“The performance of the sector in the districts was the same as at national level”, he elaborated. He said the districts were impacted by drought, adding that they however did not have a major outbreak of disease like Foot and Mouth Disease.

Similarly, he said the performance of the sector and the ministry in Hukuntsi, CharlesHill and Letlhakeng sub – districts was the same as nationally.

Mr Seretse was responding to a question that was asked by Kgalagadi North Member of Parliament, Mr Phillip Khwae. MP Khwae asked the minister to brief the house on the performance of his ministry at national level, the Kgalagadi and Ghanzi districts respectively.

He also wanted the minister to brief the house on the performance of the Hukuntsi, Charleshill and Letlhakeng sub districts for the past three years.

Mr Khwae also asked the minister to further state whether there has been a decline or improvement in the performance of all these districts. Ends