20 Sep 2016

A member of Presidential Inspectorate Task Team, Mr Peter Siele says economic diversification is currently government’s top priority.

Speaking during a kgotla meeting addressed by the task team in Lehututu this week, he noted that the government had availed several citizen empowerment schemes such as poverty eradication and Youth Development Fund (YDF), in an endeavour to diversify the economy.

He said for a long time the economy of the country heavily depended on the mining sector hence the need for diversification.

He said the government has observed that reliance on the sector is perilous because in the event it is affected by any economic adversity that would mean the whole economy would collapse.

For this reason, he said the government had introduced Economic Stimulus Programme (ESP) which aimed at expediting economic growth following a difficult financial terrain that the country experienced after an economic melt-down that hit the entire world.

He also said ESP is government’s bold and robust action plan to stimulate economic growth in response to the continued slow economic growth following the 2008/2009 economic down turn that denied the country good fortunes.

He therefore said ESP targets, among others, construction of roads and buildings and tourism development.

He stressed that construction will help in addressing the problem of unemployment, which mostly affects youth as well as fast tracking the building of classrooms and teachers houses.

For his part Lehututu VDC chairperson, Mr Bassie Ramomo expressed gratitude to government programmes noting they uplift the lives of youths and address unemployment.

He thanked the task team for their efforts to assist in businesses noting the information will give relevant authorities advice on what steps to take to ensure sustainability of businesses. ENDS