12 Feb 2023

A total of 32 mega projects were implemented during the eleventh National Development Plan (NDP 11) at over P36 billion.

Answering a parliamentary question recently, Minister of Finance, Ms Peggy Serame said projects amounting to over P29 billion were funded through the domestic development fund while some were financed for over P6 billion through loans secured from International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID) and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

She added that other projects were funded from grants from the European Union (EU) for over P131 million.

The NDP 11 mega projects, she said included energy and power generation, water supply and sanitation infrastructure, road and bridge infrastructure as well as land servicing.

She said the amount paid for the projects was over P27 billion while over P2bn was paid to Batswana-owned companies and over P11bn was paid to joint ventures.

Also, she said over P13bn was paid to foreign companies.

The minister was, however, unable to share information on taxes paid by individual contractors saying such information was confidential.

“Furthermore, taxes collected by Botswana Unified Revenue Service (BURS) goes into the Consolidated Fund together with revenue from other sources. As you are aware, the revenue from the Consolidated Fund is then appropriated by Parliament at the beginning of each financial year under the recurrent and development budget,” she explained.

As such, she said it would be difficult to directly link the tax paid by some companies and was also unable to state how much was ploughed back as investment as well as the value of corporate social responsibility that the companies had contributed to.

Member of Parliament for Selebi Phikwe West, Mr Dithapelo Keorapetse had asked the minister to state the number of public mega projects which had been funded through the Domestic Development Fund among others. Ends