03 Mar 2019

Assistant Minister of Agricultural Development and Food Security, Mr Kostantinos Markus, has requested approval of the ministry’s proposed P2.4 billion recurrent and development budget for 2019/2020.

Presenting the proposal to Parliament recently, Mr Markus explained that P2.4 billion comprised P1.3 billion for the recurrent budget and P1.1 billion for development budget.

He said under the recurrent budget estimates, P308 million would be allocated to the ministry's four parastatals being Botswana University and Natural Resources, Botswana Agricultural Marketing Board, Botswana Meat Commission - Maun and National Food Technology Research Centre.

Mr Markus said the development budget proposal reflected a 33 per cent decline and attributed the significant decline to two supplementary requests approved for BMC support and livestock support projects.

He said the department of crop production would get P842 million which constitutes 78 per cent of the development budget.

The requested funds were for the Integrated Support Programme for Arable Agriculture Development (ISPAAD), Livestock Management and Infrastructure Development II (LIMID) amongst others.

Furthermore, Mr Markus highlighted that the agricultural sector continued to experience the effect of climate change due to high temperatures.

He said there had been an increase in farmers’ uptake of appropriate technologies, such as climate smart agriculture.

He  said the ministry continued to invest in animal and crop research to promote agricultural development.

Also, Mr Markus highlighted that the milk production had improved with production increasing to 7.2 million litres as at December 2018 compared to 6.4 million during the same time in 2017.

Local milk supply, he said, remained far short of the national demand of 65 million litres per year, adding that various dairy projects including MilkAfric with a capacity to hold 2 000 cattle were being developed to remedy the situation.

Mr Markus further stated that government had approved a 25 per cent drought subsidy on livestock feeds, vaccines and deworming drugs as a relief measure for livestock farmers.

He noted that government was considering recommendations made during the feasibility study on liberalisation of the beef export market, which would inform policy and regulatory reforms.

The assistant minister stated that PEEPA had resumed the BMC privatisation process and was also developing a regulatory framework that would inform the setting up of a meat industry regulator.

Government loans to BMC had also been converted to equity to improve BMC balance sheet, he said. ENDS