07 Feb 2022

Government recognises the importance of social programmes in supporting the living standards of those who are unable to support themselves for various reasons, says Minister of Finance and Economic Development, Ms Peggy Serame.’

Presenting budget speech today, Ms Serame said government also recognised the importance of programmes aimed at supporting livelihoods and income generation among the poor.
She said the first group included old age pensions, destitutes’ allowances, World War 11 veterans’ allowances and the disabled.

“I am pleased to announce that the amounts of all these allowances will be increased with effect from April 1 2022,” said the minister.
She said the second group of programmes included Ipelegeng, ISAPAAD and LIMID. The minister said they were being restructured to achieve greater effectiveness and reduced dependency on government.
Ms Serame also said government continued to implement the national social protection framework as well as the national social protection COVID-19 recovery plan aimed at delivering a social protection system that reduced “waste and double dipping.”

She said the development of a single social registry was progressing well and that social protection programmes implemented by the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development had been uploaded while those implemented by other ministries would be uploaded by March 2022.

The minister said with all these initiatives in place government would have a social protection system that could “effectively and efficiently respond to the varied risks and vulnerabilities faced by Batswana of different age groupings and social background.”

Ms Serame also noted that the implementation of the Poverty Eradication Programme has continued during the COVID-19 pandemic although at much reduced levels.
She said since the start of the programme in the 2012/13 financial year, over 40 000 projects had been funded and that over 29 000 were still operational and employing 34 716 people.

The minister said unfortunately many of the projects had been adversely affected by reduced activity during COVID-19 lockdowns which resulted in a number of failures and closures.
She noted that since the start of the programme 10 years ago, P1.28 billion had been provided for establishing projects, capacity building and programme management,“Going forward, the programme will be strengthened to improve the survival chances of projects through better capacity building, support, monitoring and structuring of projects,” said Ms Serame.ENDS