17 Jul 2018

Parliament has approved the supplementary estimates of expenditure from the Development Fund, contained in Financial Paper No.1 of 2018/ 2019.

Presenting the paper before Parliament on recently, Minister of Finance and Economic Development, Mr Kenneth Matambo said the paper contained the supplementary estimates amounting to over P1.2billion in respect of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security and Ministry of Mineral Resources Green Technology and Energy Security.

 He said the request also required the creation of two projects in particular, Botswana Meat Commission support with a total estimated cost of P800million and National Oil Security with an estimated cost of P520 million.

This, he said did not involve injecting any new cash to BMC but would rather be repaying public debts service fund.

Minister Matambo said  the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security in consultation with his ministry, had identified potential savings amounting to P179 million of which a total of P124 million was to cater for reimbursement to BMC, P35 million would be to restructure thze Francistown abattoir while P20 million was to partly meet the requirement for the conversion of government loans to BMC amounting to P641 million in to equity as per Presidential Directive Cap 5/2018  

“The balance of P621 million is requested under the Domestic Development Fund. In order to facilitate the release of funds to BMC, there was need to create a new project in NDP 11 called BMC support with a total estimated cost of P800 million,” he said.With regard to the Ministry of Mineral Resources Green Technology and Energy Security, Mr Matambo requested  a total estimated cost of P520 million for the payment of debt owed to oil companies and claims from  companies constructing the Tshele hills oil storage project.

He said the payment to oil companies amounted to P300million while the Tshele hill storage constructors debts amounted to P220million.

He highlighted that the two debts could not be settled from the National Petroleum Funds because it  was currently depleted,  adding that in order to settle the payments of the outstanding obligations  there was need to establish a project named National Oil Security with a total estimated cost  P520million annual provision of the same amount.Mr Matambo further proposed that an amount of over P114 million under strengthening the Directorate of Intelligence and Security Services be reallocated to the new project and the remaining P405 million would be requested as supplementary funds from the Domestic Development Fund.ENDS