13 Sep 2015

The  government has identified key priority areas that have a high potential for economic growth as well as job creation. The key priority areas are agriculture, tourism and infrastructure development. 

Vice President, Mr Mokgweetsi Masisi said during his engagement with members of the private sector on employment creation in Gaborone on Saturday (September 12).  He said the private sector was a critical stakeholder in stimulating the economy and creating employment to improve the livelihood of citizens.

He said he expected the discussions from private sector participants to critique and suggest what would help the government to improve their proposals.

Vice President Masisi said the role of the government was to provide a conducive and enabling environment that would facilitate the private sector to grow their businesses.

“It is in this process that sustainable jobs will ultimately be created,” he said.

Mr Masisi said the engagement was to further produce a robust and actionable programme of action with clear targets of how many jobs were planned to be created over a certain period of time and what needed to be done to achieve the target. Vice President Masisi noted that there would be need to track performance against the target for the achievement of the national agenda in order to ensure benefits reach Batswana.

He also noted that the development of the monitoring and evaluation system was ongoing.

He added that he personally leads the process to ensure that other national strategies were also taken on board such as the upcoming NDP 11 and the coming Vision beyond 2016.

Mr Masisi urged the meeting to interrogate and provide feedback on the proposals that have been developed thus far. He said it was intended that some of the projects that would be initiated to be achieved within this financial year, while others would be rolled into the regular planning and budgeting processes of the government. Ends