06 Jun 2014

It is high time people stop thinking that citizen economic empowerment is specifically about dishing out money.

Permanent secretary in the Ministry of Trade, Ms Banny Molosiwa said people should rather know that citizen economic empowerment involved various projects and initiatives geared towards improving people’s livelihoods.

Responding to some comments from the members of the Public Accounts Committee, Ms Molosiwa said government had come up with a lot of initiatives that worked towards economically empowering citizens and not necessarily dishing out money to them.

She said it was time that Batswana took advantage of these initiatives instead of looking towards being debited with funds in account and mistaking it for citizen economic empowerment.

She also clarified to the committee that the country’s move towards attracting foreign direct investors was progressing well. She said the ministry was aggressively working towards attracting foreign investors to the country though at times it took time for such investors to act.

Ms Molosiwa said the challenge they also found in attracting foreign investors was the fact that some neighbouring countries, who were competitors in this move, are at an advantageous stage as they have more incentives to lure these investors.

She explained that this has led to some foreign investors preferring to invest in the neighbouring countries than Botswana.

Mr Kentse Rammidi, member of the committee had asked the accounting officer as to what the ministry is doing in its effort to assuring a visible economic diversification drive as well as attracting foreign investors to the country.

On issues of cooperatives, Ms Molosiwa informed the committee that the ministry has undertaken a rigorous exercise to clean-up the existing cooperatives to make them more appealing to the market. She said the ministry has only remained with 198 functional cooperatives which most of them are run by youth.

She told the committee that government financial institutions are ready to fund cooperatives for as long as such cooperatives produce a viable business plan.

Another committee member, Mr Phillip Makgalemele had asked the accounting officer to clarify if the ministry was in a position to have its funding institutions assisting the cooperatives businesses which had proven to be struggling to survive. Ends