20 Mar 2017

Minister of Mineral Resources, Green Technology and Energy Security, Advocate Sadique Kebonang has requested Parliament to approve a total budget of over P3 billion for 2017/18 financial year.

Presenting the budget proposals in Parliament recently, Advocate Kebonang said out of the total amount, P298 465 060 was for recurrent budget and P2 935 648 679 for development budget.

Advocate Kebonang said the ministry’s projected total revenue for 2017/18 financial year was anticipated to be P10.4 billion due to volatility of the diamond market prices and curtailment of production in major mines, particularly Debswana mines.

“The projected revenue was revised during the month of December 2016 to P16.6 billion due to increase of volume uptake of the diamonds in minerals market,” he said.

He said the budget was expected to increase by P3.9 billion or 31 per cent compared to the 2016/17 budget of P12.7 billion.

“The bulk of the increase is expected from the increase of volume uptake of the diamonds in minerals market,” he said.

The minister said the recurrent budget had increased by 16 per cent mainly due to Botswana Energy Regulatory Authority (BERA) Budget for its initial set-up.

He said 74 per cent or P221 588 840 of the recurrent budget went to the Department of Corporate Services and the remaining P76 876 220 was to be distributed amongst the following Departments: Geological Survey gets P30 854 060; Department of Mines (P24 934 810) and Department of Energy Affairs gets a share of P21 087 350.

On development budget, the minister said the largest share of P1.457 billion had been allocated to the Botswana Power Corporation (BPC) Support programme, which aims at subsidising users against high electricity tariffs in order for the corporation to meet the electricity market cost.

Minister Kebonang said the next largest share of P1.3 billion went to the Energy Security programme.

He said major projects to benefit from these resources included Rakola Substation, Northwest Transmission Grid, Morupule A Refurbishment, Morupule B (Unit 5 and 6) and Rural Electrification and Network Extension.

“These projects, which are meant to ensure that Botswana is self-sufficient in power production as well as ensure that Batswana residing in rural villages have access to electricity for their own socio-economic development are on-going at various stages of completion,” he said.

He said the remaining P177 660 000 of the development budget was to be shared between the Mineral Exploration and Green Technology programmes for implementation of relevant studies and strategies. ENDS