21 Jul 2019

The Minister of Investment Trade and Industry, Ms Bogolo Kenewendo says the 5th Annual Competition and Economic Regulation (ACER) week will help the country towards the implementation of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) peer review recommendations.

Speaking at the ACER week hosted by the Competition Authority of Botswana, Ms Kenewendo said Botswana through the Competition Authority recently subjected herself to the UNCTAD peer reviewed processes and the learnings and support offered by ACER were key.

Ms Kenewendo said the week would offer opportunity for competition authorities and regulators to share knowledge, keep abreast of key developments across the region and build networks for collaboration. She said the interventions were key to helping the competition authorities to undergo a process of self- evaluation by exploring strengths and weaknesses with the view of making changes and improvements towards the betterment of the people.

She said another development for the Competition Authority of Botswana was that the government was in the process of merging the Competition and Consumer Protection Acts to join some few jurisdiction in the sub-region where the acts were regulated by one agency.

Ms Kenewendo said all the processes for the merger had been undertaken as Parliament had already passed the relevant legislation and the needed negotiations had started to ensure the authority was able to run with the dual mandate.She said government did not necessarily believe it was a dual mandate as competition and consumer protection were intertwined and could not be separated. She said the government was committed to creating a vibrant market that guaranteed free access to all economic players and sealed to the plea of competitive markets.

She said as a developing nation, Botswana was working on transition phase to move from a middle and upper middle income  to a higher income economy and working on several doing business reforms such as reviewing the Trade Bill and Industrial Development Bill which would see the removal of certain licenses except those that deal with health and safety measures.

Ms Kenewendo said the review would result in the reduction of the process, starting business from 48 days to seven days for those that needed licenses and five days to those that did not need licenses and the government believed that the reduction would help the country become competitive in the global market.

She said the other initiative was that of Companies and Intellectual Property Authority (CIPA) Online Business Registration System (OBRS) that would reduce the process of registration of a business from seven days to a few hours.

The minister said trade ministry of trade was dedicated to ease of doing business, continued to be competitive and become a true representative of a government that wanted to be relevant, responsive and responsible to stakeholders. ENDS