25 Feb 2018

Minister of Finance and Economic Development Mr Kenneth Matambo has reminded parliamentarians that the budget speech does cover every issue concerning the nation.

Several legislators complained in their debate of the 2018/19 budget speech that the minister failed to mention how government would address critical issues in their constituencies, especially infrastructural development and service provision.

However, responding to the legislators’ remarks on Thursday, Mr Matambo explained that the budget speech focused on presenting the national budget and updating the nation about how the economy was performing.

He urged them to address infrastructure development and service provision issues concerning their constituencies to relevant ministries during the Committee of Supply, when Parliament discusses budget allocations for every ministry.

Mr Matambo added that it was not wrong for some government projects to appear on the budget speech every year. “There is a query that the projects appear year after year. But, I must indicate that the mega projects must appear year after year because they do not take one year to develop.” For example, he said construction of health facilities, primary school facilities, roads facilities and villages infrastructure are some of the projects which will appear year after year.

The minister further said contrary to claims by some legislators that the 2018/19 budget speech has not communicated in clear terms how government intended to address employment and diversify the economy, he had actually done that in his speech by explaining programmes government would fund for purposes of creating job opportunities and diversifying the economy.

Mr Matambo added that the remarks made by Leader of Opposition, Mr Duma Boko that the Umbrella for Democratic Change would create 100 000 jobs and effectively end poverty if it attained state power were a “wild dream”.

He said it was impossible to attain zero poverty, while he explained that the economy of the country needed to grow by seven per cent per annum for it to be able to create new 100 000 jobs.

He said Mr Boko’s promises would be impossible ‘since the economy is projected to grow by around 4.3 per cent in the next financial year.’

The minister explained that if government decided to go ahead and employ 100 000 more civil servants without the economy growing by seven per cent, the country’s budget deficit would rise to around P7 billion because the salaries would require an additional P3.6 billion.

He concurred with Alliance for Progressives leader, Mr Ndaba Gaolathe that Botswana should develop an outward looking stance towards investment and that the budget should focus on sectors which offered the economy more opportunities. Ends