10 Jun 2015

The Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning, Mr Solomon Sekwakwa, says youth unemployment is one of the ministry’s priority areas.

Addressing the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on June 8, he said unemployment pre-occupied the ministry because it was a challenges not just in Botswana but worldwide.

He said government had good intentions when introducing the graduates internship programme to absorb them into the main economic stream to acquire skills.

He, however, said the business community had made the programme look negative because they no longer employed, but depended on cheap labour from interns to maximize the profit.

He stated that it is imperative for government to come up with sustainable programs that would help address youth unemployment. Mr Sekwakwa noted that Ipelegeng programme was a temporary measure to decrease unemployment and said he was not sure whether Ipelegeng was counted as part of employment statistics.

He said Botswana was a fragile economy being reliant on diamonds, which were unreliable in that when other economies were troubled, the sales went down. He said power cuts and water shortage were a major challenge in Botswana even for domestic investment to grow.

He said there was a lot of money to be injected in to the two sectors to revive the infrastructure, which would come at a high cost. Asked on the state of National Development Bank (NDB) and if it was still able to disburse loans, he said the NDB had challenges because of the improper billing system but the bank is not bankrupt.

He said as per the PAC committee requirements; he would submit the bank’s balance sheets in the next sitting. The MPs further probed on the situation with the plastic levy why the funds were not collected. The PS responded that plastic levy was government policy;  therefore the relevant ministry should put structures in place to collect the funds.

The committee also said they feel BURS was not doing enough in collecting tax from the Japanese car garages all over the country. The MPs stated that some garages might be faking their accounts so that they were taxed little more so that when one buys a car there would be a once off transaction by paying in full.

Mr Sekwakwa said BURS dreceived tip offs from the public and raid businesses they suspected invades tax.

Moreover, he said it is possible that some businesses do cheat on tax by manipulating systems adding that if BURS catches entities who invade tax the penalty is huge. ENDS