25 Nov 2019

Cabinet has commenced the process of addressing the country’s challenges by developing a draft  action plan for economic transformation, President Dr Mokgweetsi Masisi has said.

  Closing a two-day cabinet retreat held at Manong Resort near Lobatse over the weekend, Dr Masisi explained that the draft contained key themes on the transformation process.

He pointed out that more work was still required to refine the draft into a complete transformation guiding document.

“We must use the mid-term review of the eleventh National Development Plan (NDP 11) to structurally cause these changes towards transformation. We must be deliberate about it. 

There isn’t the best time than now,” President Masisi said, promising that his government would do its best to  improve the lives of Batswana.

“We are committed as cabinet to improve the lives of Batswana and create a new Botswana,” he said.

In his inauguration speech recently, the President identified  job creation, improvement of service delivery and strengthening of governance structures as priority areas his administration would address to turn around Botswana’s fortunes.

Minister for Presidential Affairs, Governance and Public Administration, Mr Kabo Morwaeng said the retreat served as orientation for new cabinet members.

He explained that cabinet had set short and long term objectives as it embarked on the economic transformation journey.

Every minister was required to set his/her objectives, said Mr Morwaeng.

Minister of Finance and Economic Development, Dr Thapelo Matsheka said the retreat was also part of team building and bonding for the new cabinet.

“We also used the retreat to look at what we want to achieve. We want to turn the economy into a high income one. There are challenges like unemployment, poverty and inequality. Part of the exercise was to identify priority areas,” Dr Matsheka said.

He said one of the things cabinet agreed on was to improve efficiency of expenditure on project implementation and government procurement processes.

Cabinet also agreed to tap on the public-private partnership model to carry out infrastructural development. ends