23 Feb 2023

Member of Parliament for Kanye North, Mr Thapelo Letsholo says recovery of the Government Investment Account (GIA) over the past year is a positive economic development as it will assist government in saving for the future.

According to Minister of Finance, Ms Peggy Serame, the GIA reached P17.8 billion in October last year from P9.8 billion in 2021.

Mr Letsholo said this when contributing to the 2023/2024 financial year budget proposals in Parliament on Wednesday.

He argued that although modest, the increase would give government some cushion to plan for the future as well as cater for emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

The MP said it was an economic risk for government to have been forced to fund past developments as soon as they accrued.

Mr Letsholo was content on the fact that the finance minister, Ms Serame indicated in the budget speech that she was aware of the risk of overreliance on minerals, particularly diamonds.

“This concern is reasonable, so the minister needs our support on ways to address this risk and the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) has shown the way in including value chain development as one of the national priorities,” he said.

He said it was a also good sign that on the issues of value chain development, government was specific on some sectors such as agriculture, tourism and mineral beneficiation.

Conversely, the legislator cautioned of the imminent need to ensure that value chains benefits were enjoyed by a majority of the citizens than just a handful.

Still on value chain development, Mr Letsholo said that he supported the President, Dr Mokgweetsi Masisi’s stance that the country should have more control on how much value its rough diamonds generated further down the supply chain post cutting and polishing.

He also appreciated the decision to allocate the education and health ministries the largest portion of the budget as the two were major elements of a productive and prosperous nation.

He called on the relevant ministries to overhaul the whole school syllabus, from primary to tertiary institutions, to make it relevant to the current trends of digitilisation.

For his part, Serowe South MP, Mr Leepetswe Lesedi was of the view that the 2023-2025 Transitional National Development Plan (TNDP) only answered the needs of a few, particularly that his constituency was not catered for in the plan.

“Priorities of constituencies cannot all be the same. Government nationalised the priority of roads construction, which is not necessarily the priority in my constituency. We would have preferred projects like a second police station in Serowe over a road,” he said.

Mr Lesedi also advised government to introspect on the schools’ examination results, which he said had been declining since 2020. 

He said such a decline was attributed to challenges such as shortage of stationery, furniture and food, which he said forced some learners to abscond.

He also urged the Minister of Finance to consider increasing the budget for the National Assembly, saying that in the past some committees failed to sit because of shortage of funds, something he said might continue as the budget for this financial year was still low. ENDs