20 Sep 2018

Business Botswana president, Mr Gobusamang Keebine, has assured the business community that he will create synergies to ensure swift service delivery.

Speaking at the Business Botswana’s 46th annual general meeting in Gaborone on September 19, Mr Keebine said there was discord between the business community and local government authorities. 

That, said called for harmonisation of processes and procedures to ensure that investors were assisted to start businesses in communities in the shortest time possible.

To deal with the challenge, Mr Keebine said Business Botswana intended to embark on a robust consultation process to assess effectiveness of the Local Level Consultative Council aimed at improving coordination of private sector members and the local authorities to drive Botswana towards economic prosperity.

“When someone dreams of starting an innovative business, or something wild, they should not be frustrated by the disjointed operational logistics at a local level,” he said.

He asserted that the organisation had nonetheless made strides in engaging stakeholders such as China Council for the Promotion of International Trade where Business Botswana recently signed a memorandum of cooperation to strengthen trade relations between businesses in Botswana and China.

Mr Keebine further told the business community that Business Botswana continued to explore avenues that could enable it to facilitate trade relations for its members citing Conversations with Africa as a media programme that would be used to deal with issues of intra trade in Africa.

On organisational operations, Mr Keebine noted that despite the challenges that the organisation faced in the preceding year, it had generally done well having improved its membership base from 350 in 2016 to 720 members who were paying subscriptions.

“This has translated into an additional revenue of close to P1 million as compared to the same period in 2017,” he said.

However, he said, the organisation continued to seek ways of putting together a sustainability plan to tackle over-reliance on the subscription revenue stream as a key basis for its income.

He expressed optimism of prospects of the organisation achieving its mandate, adding the organisation shall work on its branding and overhaul its operations in satellite branches to ensure that clients got high value for being affiliated to Business Botswana.

On other issues, Mr Keebine asserted that it was a new dawn for the private sector for the reason that President Mokgweetsi Masisi had called the sector on board to embrace their views as the country looks at the renewal of the diamond trade lease agreement between government and DeBeers Company.

He said that was something that did not happen in the past hence the need to applaud the President’s move.

In view of the theme: Seizing growth and investment opportunities in expanding markets, Botswana Trade Commission (BOTC) chief executive officer, Mr Mphoeng Tamasiga said it recognised the pivotal role private sectors played as the engine for economic growth, prosperity and job creation.

Therefore, he said BOTC was enacted pursuant to the provisions of the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) agreement of 2002 which required all SACU member states to set up national bodies to receive requests for tariff changes, carry out preliminary investigations and make recommendations to the SACU Tariff Board and subsequently the SACU Council. 

Therefore, he said, BOTC could investigate and determine the impact of tariffs in Botswana’s exports and imports and provide recommendations regarding any tariff change.

He said it was pertinent for the business community to understand the commission’s mandate as it dissected and examined the impact of the proposed tariff changes on industry competitiveness in regional and international markets, employment creation and Botswana’s commitments under various regional and multilateral trade agreements. 

Such agreements, Mr Tamasiga said, included SACU, Southern African Development Community, European Union, Economic Partnership Agreement and the World Trade Organisation.

Furthermore, he divulged that the tariff amendments provided protection to the Botswana manufacturing sector against competing imports as well as contributed to a reduction in costs of production to local industry amongst many other responsibilities. ENDS