15 Apr 2013

The Economy and Employment Thematic Working Group (TWG) has been given a budget ceiling of P17.8 billion for the remainder of National Development Plan 10.

Minister of Trade and Industry, Ms Dorcas Makgato-Malesu told Parliament when presenting the draft mid-term review on economy and employment on Thursday that the amount was far less than the estimated budget of P38 billion.

“Consequently, we had to undertake an extensive prioritisation exercise in terms of on-going projects, maintenance projects, self-liquidating projects, projects with high economic impact, possible public private partnership projects and projects for possible funding by donors,” said the minister.

“Priority was given to on-going projects, maintenance projects and a number of new projects. The total for on-going projects and the few new projects as categorised by thematic area was: doing business, P119.5 million, infrastructure, P15.5 billion, ICT, P1.8 billion, and competitive HR, P330.2 million,” she added.

The minister explained that the economy and employment TWG, was one of the four TWGs adopted by government when it prepared for the NDP 10 in 2008.

She noted that it was introduced to drive the economic growth agenda and wealth creation for the economy. Ms Makgato-Malesu said the approach was adopted in order to ensure a more efficient and improved coordination of prioritisation of the national development agenda.

She also noted that as a result of the down-scaling of the economy and employment budget estimate, some self-liquidating projects had not been included in projects to be carried out in the remainder of NDP 10.

They included the P1.5 billion re-fleeting of Botswana Railways, a P2.4 billion Air Botswana project, P80 million rural telecommunications and P1.2 billion land servicing project. Other projects affected by the budget cut, according to the minister, were high impact ones such as the P245 million leather park project, the P42 million Leupane Dairy Cluster, the P1.1 billion power transmission infrastructure, and the employment generating projects such as the Rapid Incubation Programme which would have cost P32 million.

Ms Makgato-Malesu further said Botswana had recorded an increase in formal employment from 317 883 jobs in March 2009 to 538 754 jobs by the end of the 2011/12 financial year.

She said accelerated economic growth was a crucial strategy for achieving economic diversification. ENDS