17 Dec 2019

Specially elected Member of Parliament and Minister of Trade and Investment, Ms Peggy Serame has reiterated government’s dedication to facilitating both foreign and domestic investors to set up businesses in Botswana.

When contributing to the State-of-the-Nation Address debate, Ms Serame highlighted that government had over the past months been aggressive on investor attraction on sectors of interest.

She said it was pleasing that some of the investor missions were promising to bear fruits as some investors have already shown interest by conducting scoping studies while some have conducted a preliminary investigation.

She emphasised the need to enhance the government’s transparency and information sharing capacity with all stakeholders to instil confidence in potential investors.

Ms Serame applauded the 11th Parliament for allocating funds and setting out legislation towards investing in the development of key economic enabler projects that would support growth such as transportation and logistics.

She said by so doing, the country would be able to reach the economic transformation agenda.

She, however, stated that the infrastructure development should not solely focus on government self-capitalisation but should also allow for private sector participation.

The involvement of the private sector in the infrastructure development drive, she said would serve as a true example of Public-Private Partnership (PPP) which was a way of delivering key infrastructure projects at less cost to the state.

She explained that there should be more of PPP enablers like the need to consider risk waited contingent liabilities when calculating statutory debt to enable the private sector to be more involved in major infrastructure development.

“Contingent liability should not be classified as real debt as the country will not be able to adapt and have more PPP projects as that kind of debt and guarantee will be limited by statutory debt limit,” she said.

She said it is pleasing to note that the State-of-the-Nation address posed some opportunities for the private sector especially on opening up PPP space.

She, therefore, said there should be a focus on private sector growth and private sector development.

Thus, she said the process to inculcate the customer service standards and the business culture in the public service should be a key factor to economic growth.

Such reforms, she said would not only make it easy for new investors coming into the country but would ease domestic companies’ ability to access skills that may be needed from outside the country.

She cautioned that some of the bottlenecks that hindered investor confidence in Botswana included the implementation of the ease of doing business reforms like the promptly awarding of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) clearance certificates.

Ms Serame, however, remained hopeful that the review of the EIA Act would speed up the invertor relocation to Botswana.

She said the country had been excelling when it comes to public finance management and have a great sovereign debt rating which it should use to its advantage to attract more investors in the large economic and transformational infrastructure by encouraging PPP participation.

She further said more effort should also be channelled towards the promotion of citizen participation and inclusiveness.

“There are a number of critical factors in transforming any economy and one such factor is Small and Micro-Scale Enterprises which are fundamental to employment generation and economic diversification,” she said.

Ms Serame stated that it was equally important to empower the middle class as Botswana has for a number of years failed to set up deliberate policies and strategies to address their needs and graduate them to high earning class.

Furthermore, she indicated her Ministry would in the near future propose a citizen empowerment legislation aimed at promoting citizens participation in the economy and inclusiveness. ENDS