27 Mar 2019

 Some Lobatse councillors are against the decision to privatise the Botswana Meat Commission (BMC) abattoir.

The councillors voiced their disapproval on March 26 to the chief executive officer of Public Enterprises Evaluation and Privatisation Agency (PEEPA), Mr Ezekiel Moumakwa during a full council meeting.  

Mr Moumakwa had said the privatisation would relief the financial burden of operating BMC from government. He further said selling BMC to private entities could result in the commission operating efficiently and profitably. He pointed out that government had spent large sums of money to sustain BMC in the past, with P640 million given to the commission last year as write-offs. 

The PEEPA chief explained that government had asked the agency to complete the BMC privatisation process by the end of the year. 

He said they wanted to ensure that Batswana benefited from the process through shareholding. 

“For whatever we are doing, we have to ensure that there is a portion for Batswana. What we are trying to do is take a portion of the stake of the commission’s and put it aside, either in a trust or under government, and release it later as shares for Batswana after investors had come in and turned around the entity,” Mr Moumakwa.

He further said they were looking at unbundling the commission’s business processes during the privatisation process, and explained that the challenge for entities such as BMC was that they were too huge doing multiple things such as meat processing, tannery and cannery. 

“These are the things we are also looking at, to have somebody ultimately taking over the cannery, another taking over the tannery and maybe leaving the meat processing aspect only,” he said.

A number of councillors, however, opposed the decision, with Boswelatlou ward councillor, Mr Themba Stimela saying privatising BMC would remove its monopoly and ultimately lead to its collapse since everybody would be free to export beef. 

He said the move could also lead to loss of jobs which would adversely affect the economy of Lobatse. 

Mr Stimela said mismanagement was the main source of BMC problems. He said BMC would make better profits if put under better management. 

“How do you go into contracts of P700 per cattle per day? Imagine the cattle spending the whole month in a feedlot, it is P21 000,” he said.  

Tsopeng North ward councillor, Mr Gofaone Kedise feared that putting BMC into the hands of investors would lead to the ripping off of cattle owners since investors would look to make quick profit. He asked government to fix the BMC operations so that it became profitable.

Maokaneng ward councillor, Ms Tiny Dinoko said she was against BMC privatisation because it would lead to loss of jobs. She further wanted to know whether consultations were done before the decision was made.

However, Botoka ward councillor, Ms Caroline Lesang said she did not have any problems with BMC privatisation. 

She, however, expressed surprise at what she said were conflicting statements between PEEPA and the Minister of Agricultural Development and Food Security. 

“The problem I have is that when the minister was here in March 2018, he expressed that they were not going to privatise the Lobatse plant because it was doing very well. He said the BMC problem lied with Francistown and Maun,” she said. ENDS