09 Feb 2023

The country needs to formulate policies that would ensure more revenue gets into the national coffers from supposed stakeholders.

Responding to the budget speech on Wednesday, Leader of Opposition, who is also Selebi Phikwe West MP, Mr Dithapelo Keorapetse said strategies that could be employed included proper beneficiation in the mining sector.

“The UDC (Umbrella for Democratic Change) has been calling for a minerals policy with a strong component of beneficiation, which has the potential to diversify the economy and create jobs. We need at least 50 per cent target of mineral beneficiation between 5-10 years,” he said.

He said that this would also enable the country to create more employment opportunities for Batswana.

Mr Keorapetse also said as a way of boosting revenue, the country needed to close loopholes that existed in the collection of government revenue and root out corruption, two challenges that he said contributed a lot in draining the national coffers.

He said although Transparency International indicated that the country had registered a slight improvement in the level of corruption, sophisticated elite corruption was however, at a grand scale, especially in procurement.

“The Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime (DCEC) director general estimated in June 2022 that P600 million was lost in corruption over the last 11 months looking at the cases he has investigated,” he said.

He also said government should look into providing infrastructure such as roads, electricity, water and internet to farmers to cushion their cost of production and enable them to feed the nation.

Mr Keorapetse also said that the country needed to adjust its current tax collection target of 30 per cent to GDP ratio to be attained in the next five years, and consider an upwards review of corporate income tax to 30 per cent from 22 per cent.

“Exception of manufacturing companies with approval by the minister should remain. We propose that wealth tax should be considered as a means to redistribute wealth and deal with huge inequalities. There has to be a clear policy on luxury tax geared towards collecting more from luxury goods rather than taxes on basic necessities,” he said.

As a way of cushioning Batswana against the rising cost of living, Mr Keorapetse said government should consider adding water and electricity for domestic use to a list of goods and services not charged VAT.

“We welcome the development on VAT exemption for baby formula, diapers and sanitary products. We will make further suggestions on the list when the subsidiary legislation is tabled,” he said.

As a way of fighting unemployment, Mr Keorapetse said that as the UDC, they suggested absorption of all interns and Tirelo Setshaba participants into the public service, some agencies of the state and parastatals more so that they were qualified and already rendering a proper service.

As a way of empowering citizens, he implored government to ensure that 70 per cent of the P21 billion development budget went to citizen owned companies while the remaining could be shared by joint ventures and foreigners.

Mr Keorapetse also called on government to consider introducing a decent living wage at par with other countries of comparable economies such as South Africa, Mauritius, Namibia and Seychelles.

On other national issues, Mr Keorapetse urged government to resource the Botswana Police, saying Botswana was becoming an unsafe society.

“In the last 12 months, 2 481 women and girls were raped, 310 people were murdered, 1 515 robberies including four cash in transit heist and 17 ATM blasting and 7 801 cases of property crimes such as housebreaking and theft, burglary and theft and store breaking and theft,” he said.

He said therefore that the Botswana Police needed to be resourced with vehicles and modern equipment as well as hiring more officers, including absorbing all special constables into the mainstream service and improving their conditions of service. ENDS