16 Mar 2022

The appointment process of the Botswana Meat Commission (BMC) Chief Executive Officer (CEO) is ongoing, Parliament has heard.

Responding to a parliamentary question on Tuesday, agricultural development and food security assistant minister, Mr Molebatsi Molebatsi told legislators that the position was advertised and potential candidates have been interviewed.

Mr Molebatsi added that approval by Cabinet for the appointment of the CEO would be concluded by the end of this month.

“While the CEO position is undeniably vital to implement the turnaround of the BMC, I can confirmed that there is a fully-resourced Board of Directors appointed to the BMC, but also a bench of executive management as well as support from the ministry management to ensure that all that is required within the BMC’s operational environment is addressed,” he said.

He indicated that the BMC had just developed an organisational strategy tagged ‘Meriting 2022-2025’ aimed at addressing urgent matters within the organisation. “It is through the implementation of this strategy, which is in its first-year of implementation, that BMC will address existing challenges and meet the growing and shifting market demands.

The BMC Meriting Strategy maps out the direction the BMC will take to fulfil its mandate as well as meet its strategic goals, driven by desired principle of self-sustenance, sustainability, and commerciality,” he said.

He added that the strategy’s successful implementation would not only relief BMC from overreliance on government for funding but return it to profitability and long-term financial sustainability.

On the other hand, MPs also heard that the four-year aspirational target set to occasion a turned-around and a solvent-entity with positive contribution to national accounts through strategic priorities including organisational redesign to transform and make BMC perform, with a new purpose-fit business and operating model with commensurate change-support programme, restructured cost-structure and optimised utilisation of assets.

Another strategic priority, he said was to provide appropriate resourcing of the strategy through multi-faceted funding options or strategies to include also commercial or private funding entities with reduced over-dependency on government as well as improved stakeholder satisfaction by ensuring adequate management of stakeholder relations and their expectations.

The strategy would also drive maintaining currently secured export-quality standards as well as retaining global-markets’ compliance achievements and also technology adoption, digitisation and cyber-security to ensure visibility and infuse integrity on all transactions within the BMC.

Further, it would optimise the value-chain and collaborate with value-chain players to offer logistical support to cattle-farmers or producers as well as enable improved marketing and branding of the BMC (products and services) to enhance value-potential, diversify lucrative markets and manage over-reliance on the European Union (EU) trade bloc.

Further, MPs also heard that the Botswana Meat Commission (Transition) Act 2019 was expected to commence during the first quarter of the financial year 2022/2023. The Transition Bill, he added, paved way for three core activities which would include corporatisation of BMC, establishment of a meat industry regulatory authority and liberalisation of the meat export market.

“Following the signing of the Bill into law, top on the agenda of the new CEO will be to corporatise BMC,” he said.

MP’s were further told that as at December 31, 2021, BMC reported a deficit of P106 million compared to a surplus of P3.2million reported in 2020.

“This is from a consolidated cattle slaughter or throughput of 19 671 cattle for the BMC Lobatse and BMC Maun operations,” Mr Molebatsi said.

He also said that the total number of animals slaughtered for the period beginning from January 1 and ending in February next year stood at 3 029 compared to 561 during the same period  last year.

“This has in turn led to the increased revenues of P20.1 million reported compared to a budget of P11.4 million. On a year-on-year comparative basis this is a 44 per cent increase relative to P13.96 million for the same period in 2021,” he added.

Lobatse MP, Dr Thapelo Matsheka had asked the minister to update Parliament on BMC’s performance status thus far. Dr Matsheka also wanted to know about the recruitment of the organisation’s Chief

Executive Officer (CEO) and whether the delay would negatively affect its restructuring.

He further asked the minister to state when the Transition Bill that was passed by Parliament would be implemented. ENDS