22 Feb 2017

Assistant Minister of Local Government and Rural Development Ms Botlogile Tshireletso says benchmarking exercise is geared towards sharing experiences and knowledge with regard to financial management at local authority level.

Addressing the Kwazulu Natal Finance Portfolio benchmarking delegation from South Africa, Ms Tshireletso stated from the onset that the local authorities face major challenges in providing services to its people due to limited sources of revenue.

She said local authorities were constantly under pressure to respond to the growing needs and it would therefore be appealing to share experiences on available options for raising revenue and how effective and efficient they ought to be in utilising the little available resources.

“We owe it to our people to ensure that our budget allocations are done within the context of our National and Local Government policy objectives and priorities,” she said, adding that their oversight and facilitative role on the alignment of strategy to budgets by various local authorities was vital.

She expressed hope that at the end of the interaction, they would have achieved the goal of sharing the successes and challenges faced by their institutions as they strive to manage financial resources.

Ms Tshireletso noted that the delegation would also be in a better position to appreciate how Botswana allocates budget, monitors expenditure, collects revenue and how the reporting processes are carried out.

She said that her ministry was also committed to building stronger local authorities which would in turn minimise challenges and ensure better provision of services, adding that the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development has started introducing some reforms to align the strategies and priorities with the little resources they have.

She commended the South African Finance Committee for choosing Botswana to conduct the benchmarking exercise.

Head of South African delegation and chairperson of Portfolio Committee on Finance, Mr Sipho Nkosi said the benchmarking exercise aimed at sharing best practices from Botswana on how the country deals with its rural people.

Mr Nkosi said the delegation would also learn how Botswana was working tirelessly to improve the lives of rural people, adding that they learnt a lot during their visit to Ntlo Ya Dikgosi.

Director, Finance and Procurement, Mr Olebogeng Moipisi said Botswana was operating a two tier system of government, being central government at the helm and councils at the implementation level.

He said the Councils and Parastatals are autonomous bodies that can sue or be sued.

Mr Moipisi said within the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development the Department of Local Government Finance and Procurement Services has been set up to oversee the financial management processes on the Councils.

He said this was done in a bid to ensure that there was sound financial management and sound financial control over the operations of local authorities and that adequate resources are made available to local authorities to meet their statutory responsibilities and priorities of the government.

He noted that currently, there are 16 Councils, 22 Sub-district Councils financed by the ministry made up of 10 districts, 4 towns and 2 cities.

Mr Moipisi said ‘the approach to budgeting is zero based though it is mainly incremental as consideration is significantly made on the previous year budget.’ BOPA