24 Feb 2016

Parliament has approved the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning proposed budget for the 2016/17 financial year.

Minister Kenneth Matambo had proposed over P878 million and over P119 million for the ministry’s recurrent and development budgets respectively.

Responding to parliamentarians’ debates, Mr Matambo thanked them for their contributions and support of the ministry’s proposed budget.

In their debates, MPs unanimously supported the budget, but raised various issues which the minister said he would take into consideration.

The MP for Palapye, Mr Moiseraele Goya had hailed the ministry’s public finance reforms.

However, he suggested that there should be public education about the Botswana Stock Exchange (BSE), Bank of Botswana and NBFIRA among others. He also suggested the need for financial literacy among Batswana.

That, Mr Matambo said, would be discussed at the ministry. He also agreed that the National Development Bank (NDB) may not be profitable immediately upon commercialisation as suggested by Mr Goya.

Responding to the MP for Gaborone-Bonnington South, Mr Ndaba Gaolathe’s comments, the minister also agreed with him that the finance ministry was under-investing in areas of statistics.

Minister Matambo explained that the challenge emanated from general constraints of affordability and lack of resources.

He, however, said for the 2016/17 financial year, the ministry would do its best to assist Statistics Botswana to increase its capacity to collect the necessary statistics.

Some members had expressed concern about moving PEEPA from the finance ministry to the Office of the President, but the minister explained that focus was not only on moving the organisation but was a result of a more extensive exercise whereby they looked into portfolios and responsibilities of different ministries.

On Public Private Partnerships (PPP), Mr Matambo assured MP’s that they were regularly looking at the issue, and that there had been an agreement that the government and the private sector, particularly the finance ministry, must work together in coming up with proposals on how to achieve its application in implementing government programmes.

The minister also agreed with Mr Gaolathe on the development of capital markets through bonds and pensions in order to finance the deficit.

The MP for Tati East, Mr Guma Moyo had suggested moving away from cash accounting into the accrual system and that the country was faced with serious liquidity challenges.

In response, Mr Matambo said the ministry was busy on the process “but it is not something that would happen over time.”

He also agreed that the country was facing liquidity problems and that there were some entities, among them the Botswana Meat Commission (BMC), NDB, Air Botswana which needed to be looked into in terms of cash locked into such assets and were under-performing.

“But that is easier said than done. The problem is that if we had left it to the private sector to run these entities, they would have taken action by now. But in government, it is a big task to try to strike a balance between what is financially the right thing to do and the consequences which will follow in the form of unemployment.

Some of these institutions were established for social reasons so you have to take such into account. But I am hoping that as time goes on at least something will be done with some of these institutions because we do have cash blocked in them and also pouring more into them when results are near to nil,” Mr Matambo said.

On concerns raised by the Minister of Labour and Home Affairs, Mr Edwin Batshu about the Dobe Border Post given that the Namibians were putting facilities and nothing was being done on the Botswana side, Mr Matambo said he was informed by Botswana Unified Revenue Service (BURS) that they were in the process of putting up porta-camps as temporary accommodation for the personnel so that movement of people could be facilitated.

Mochudi West MP, Mr Gilbert Mangole was happy about the revenue office in the area, but was concerned about staff accommodation and closure of revenue offices early.

In response, Mr Matambo said the ministry would continue to look into the issue. On closing revenue offices at 3:30pm, Mr Matambo said he was assured by the accountant general that they were closely looking into it with the view to do something about it on a pilot basis.

On GABS which some members considered a problem, the minister explained that he had in the past tried to impress upon everybody that as a system, it was not a problem.

He said it was the supporting technology (ICT infrastructure) that was failing GABS to operate efficiently.

Therefore, he said the P5 million that he had requested would upgrade the system to increase its speed and content to provide more modules in order to enhance its capacity.

Furthermore, Mr Mangole had applauded BIDPA for doing a good job. However, he lamented the remuneration of staff members which he said was low.

Mr Matambo agreed but explained that it was a general challenge with other entities.

“Maybe the problem is the incomes policy which has been there for many years, and I have already made a request to review it so that we should not have problems that we currently have at BIDPA and elsewhere,” he said.

On Vice President, Mr Mokgweetsi Masisi’s comments, Mr Matambo said the ministry would seriously follow the many issues he had raised, among them putting growth mechanisms in BSE.

Mr Masisi, who is also the MP for Moshupa-Manyana, had argued that there was need to enable Statistics Botswana, through additional resources, to undertake some of the data collection needed for policy making. ENDS