05 Aug 2021

Minister of Environment, Natural Resources Conservation and Tourism, Ms Phildah Kereng has told Parliament that Ghanzi District has a total of 26 game ranches. 

Answering a question on Wednesday, Ms Kereng said of 24 ranches were owned by Batswana, one by a South African national while the other was a joint venture partnership between a citizen and a South African national. 

Game ranches just like many businesses, she said had been negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and most of the revenue generation by game ranches were through hunting, sale of life animals through auctions and sale of meat. 

However, Ms Kereng said hunting was the main revenue generator. She also told Parliament that because COVID-19 pandemic resulted in international travel restrictions and many of the source market for hunters, being America and Europe, were heavily impacted and as such people could not travel to Botswana to undertake hunting. 

That, she said, therefore deprived game ranchers of the income that would have been brought in by hunters in 2020.

She also indicated that government provided a wage subsidy from April to June 2020 where all industries, including game ranchers, benefitted, adding the wage subsidy was extended from July to December 2020 only for businesses with a tourism enterprise licence. 

She said some game ranches were licenced for tourism enterprise and supported while those that did not have such licence could not be supported because they did not comply with the subsidy requirements. 

Ms Kereng further indicated that government also provided a tourism industry support facility to financially support the tourism industry to keep ranches operational and only those that had a tourism enterprise licence qualified for the support. 

She also indicated that workers in the game ranching sector, just like in many others, had been negatively affected by COVID-19 pandemic due to loss of income by their employers. 

“The impact on employees ranged from reduced salaries while others lost their jobs,” she stressed. 

Furthermore, she clarified that the 2021 had seen an improvement in the fortunes of the game ranchers as source market countries started vaccinating their people and they could travel for hunting vacations in Botswana, which she said led to an uptake of more workers to support the hunting teams visiting game ranches. 

Parliament also learnt that the ministry continued to encourage game ranchers to apply for the tourism enterprise licence to ensure that the facilities for hosting their clients were fully compliant with all standards for tourism in Botswana. 

That, she said, would not only make them qualify for support but would also increase their income streams. 

Ghanzi North MP, Mr John Thiite had wanted to know the number of game ranches in the Ghanzi District. 

Mr Thiite also wanted the ministry to provide an annexure with a list of such game ranches as well as an inventory of animals found in those ranches. 

The minister was also to state how game ranches were affected by COVID-19 and whether the tourism relief fund supported game ranches. 

Further, the legislator wanted to know if there were workers in game ranches who had lost their jobs due to COVID-19 and if they had benefitted from the tourism relief fund as well as the number of those who benefitted. Ends