15 Feb 2017

Minister of Mineral Resources, Green Technology and Energy Security, Advocate Sadique Kebonang has urged Batswana to take advantage of financial support from government by opening industries to make use of Botswana Ash products.
Briefing the media after touring Botash plant in Sowa Town on Monday, Advocate Kebonang said government had established financial entities such as CEDA and National Development Bank (NDB) which Batswana should use to access funds to set up industries.
Over the years of Botash being operational, he said they had identified end products such as carbondioxide used in food process such as Coca Cola drinks, potassium sulphate in agricultural processes of fertilisers as well as sodium sulphate processing hair products and cosmetics.
Thus, he highlighted that setting up industries to make use of these products should not be the burden of government but Batswana should do their best to invade the industry fields.
He further indicated that currently majority of the industries that used such products were based outside the country, mostly in South Africa, where their head offices were based.
With such an arrangement, he said Batswana did not benefit more unlike when they had all the operations of such offices based locally.
He thus appealed to Batswana to get into partnership and ensure that they bring such industries to their own country more so that they would be getting the raw material locally.
“Looking up to government for everything is not going to help us rather let us go into partnership and woo other investors into partnership,” he said.
On the other hand, Botash managing director, Mr Montwedi Mphathi explained that end products were not known much locally compared to other parts of Southern Africa and Africa as a whole.
Mr Mphathi said statistics showed that only four per cent of their salt was enjoyed locally compared to 51 per cent in South Africa and 24 per cent in Zambia as well as Zimbabwe which despite its cash flow crisis got 13 per cent of their salt.
He nonetheless noted that they were going through a pilot project of introducing pre-packed salts which would come in smaller packs of about 500 grams in their efforts to market them.
In addition, Mr Mphathi added that with their large market share in Southern Africa, they however aimed to expand to other parts of Africa in particular the Democratic Republic of Congo which despite its political instability, the market which they had since started exploiting, had a great potential together with other countries such as Angola, Burundi, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania and Rwanda. ENDS