25 Apr 2016

The newly rebranded Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry (MITI) held the 5^th installment of its leadership forum in Kasane alongside parastatals that fall under the ministry’s portfolio.

Held under the theme, Parastatals as engines of growth for Botswana, the forum held on Friday sought to review past performance and implementation of the previous strategic plan as well as set new targets.

Giving the background of the forum, the permanent secretary in the ministry, Ms Peggy Serame said the idea of a leadership forum was conceptualised in 2011 with the objective to identify what each entity could do to improve the overall performance of the ministry and appreciate the set target for the year.

“In terms of investments both the domestic and foreign direct investment, the ministry has done well in reaching and exceeding targets,” she noted.

One of the challenges however, according to the minister, Mr Vincent Seretse, is that they had to depend on other entities who were not directly under his ministry to push their objective of facilitating the promotion of investment and the development of sustainable industries and trade. 

“As a ministry however, we have done better than most, our parastatals report to us accordingly because of such platforms as these,” he noted emphasising the need to work as a team.

He encouraged the forum to identify solutions to problems so that these become assignments for the ministry, if the problems are government related.

Minister Seretse highlighted that one of the government initiatives in ensuring that the economy was run by locals, was the Economic Diversification Drive (EDD).

“I hear this many times that the economy is not in the hands of Batswana, but is that true? If that is the case, why is that so?” he asked.

He noted that budgets for procurement were huge and as such Batswana needed to be given priority in supplying the necessary goods and services, ensuring that procurement was done from non-citizens only when Batswana were unable to.

Explaining the latest government initiative, the Economic Stimulus Programme (ESP), the minister said that the programme is expected to solve challenges such as classroom shortage across the country, using local contractors who in turn provide employment for more locals.

Botswana is ranked number 72 out of 189 countries according to the latest World Bank Ease of Doing Business Index, beaten by only two other nations in Africa, namely Mauritius and Rwanda.

However, Botswana performs badly when it comes to starting a business, ranked 143 for taking an average of 48 days to successfully get a business registered.

In contrast, New Zealand, which is ranked Number 1 in this area, takes half a day with everything processed online.  ends