29 Nov 2018

Public Enterprise Evaluation and Privatization Agency (PEEPA) is fully dedicated to privatising some of state-owned businesses such as Botswana Meat Commission (BMC) and Air Botswana. 

Briefing Kweneng District councillors on November 28, PEEPA director of public services outsourcing, Mr Ismael Joseph said the organisation’s sole mandate was to transfer services from state-owned businesses to private ownership to diversify and grow the economy, in the process, reducing the size of the public sector and increasing private sector participation in the economy.

He said in February 2008, the government made a decision to privatise BMC, and PEEPA was tasked with leading the process as the custodian of the privatisation policy. 

He said in order to promote the complete privatisation of BMC, there was need for a regulator to ensure standard quality for the European market and the BMC being transformed into a limited liability company under the Companies Act. 

Mr Joseph also said PEEPA was developing a privatisation strategy to be concluded by May 2019, adding that the strategy would provide various options on how the organisation could be privatised and recommend the optimal one. 

He said as a way of propelling the privatisation of BMC, private abattoirs would be set up to reduce market monopoly that it had hitherto enjoyed. 

“Government will establish a meat regulator to enforce compliance and maintain international standards and adherence to hygiene and sanitary requirements for abattoirs,” Mr Joseph said.

Concerning Air Botswana, he admitted that efforts to fully privatise it had previously not borne fruit, but the government had made a decision to privatise it and review its business model to make it profitable and sustainable. 

Like BMC, Air Botswana, he said, would also be converted into a company under the Companies Act.

He noted that the government had learnt a great lesson from the closure of BCL mine, where there was sole ownership, hence it is fully committed to decreasing the public sector participation and increasing privatisation as a way of growing the size of the local economy.

Councillors welcomed the privatisation of BMC, saying it would help to end its monopoly and open up the meat industry. ENDS