07 Jul 2016

The government is dedicated to ensuring the efficient provision of goods and services to the public, and the privatisation exercise will assist in this regard, secretary for presidential affairs and public administration, Ms Kebonye Moepeng has said.

In an interview, Ms Moepeng said the Public Enterprise Evaluation and Privatisation Agency (PEEPA) was moved to the Ministry of State President effecting April 1 this year as part of government’s plan to ensure better oversight of the privatisation process.

“PEEPA was initially coordinated from the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning, but the move allowed PEEPA, which has oversight over parastatals, and the Ministry of State President, which oversees the public service to have a better synergy in restructuring public enterprises, along with the public sector reforms already being coordinated from this ministry,” she said.

She said with the privatisation policy, government wants to tap on the experience the private sector has in running business, which would allow government to focus on core duties of administration and regulation.

“Government is not meant to provide all services; we believe that they are many amenities which are better offered by the private sector. Generating jobs and taking Batswana out of poverty are part of government pledges to the public, and we believe that we can ensure better efficient delivery of services to the public through privatisation, and generate wealth and jobs,” Ms Moepeng said.

Meanwhile, PEEPA chief executive officer (CEO), Mr Kgotla Ramaphane said they were in the process of implementing the privatisation policy.

“After the privatisation policy was adopted in the year 2000, PEEPA came into being as a supervisory and advisory body. Some of our successes include the adoption of the privatisation master plan, assisting government find suitable candidates to sit on parastatal boards, the Botswana Telecommunications Corporation (BTCL) public listing among many,” Mr Ramaphane said.

Also, the Public Private Partnerships (PPP) policy and implementation framework was adopted in 2009, he added. Mr Raphane further said at independence Botswana did not have a vibrant private sector which forced the government to develop public enterprises and parastatals, but over the past 50 years the private sector had developed which warrants that the state focuses on core issues of public governance.

“We believe that there are many services which can best be offered to the public by an efficient private sector. Our role at PEEPA has been to identify these, and the outsourcing of some non-core duties at government departments, such as security services, cleaning, landscaping and gardening, in order to assist small scale local enterprises gain a market,” Mr Ramaphane said.

He further assured the public that government and PEEPA would ensure that Batswana benefit from the privatisation exercise as evidenced by the BTCL public listing, which ensured that employees of the company and citizens were given priority when the state shed 49 per cent of its shareholding to the public. Ends