01 Mar 2023

The Ministry for State President requires over P3 billion to cover both the recurrent and development budget in the 2023/2024 financial year.

Presenting budget estimates before the National Assembly on Tuesday, Minister for State President, Mr Kabo Morwaeng said the ministry would use over P1 billion and over P2.3 billion for the development and recurrent budget respectively.

Mr Morwaeng said the ministry was allocated P1.5 billion for the 2022/2023 financial year recurrent budget with the current expenditure at P1.4 billion or 93 per cent of the allocated budget.

He said the 2023/2024 recurrent estimates presented an increase of 47 per cent increase over the previous year’s allocation.

He attributed the increase to, among others, termination allowances under the Directorate of Public Service Management (DPSM), basic salary arrears for the ministry, transformation offices across ministries and the merger of Directorate on Intelligence and Security Services and Counter Terrorism Analysis and Fusion Agency as well as that of Botswana Public Service College and the Botswana National Productivity Centre (BNPC).

On the 2022/2023 development budget allocations, Minister Morwaeng said a revised amount of over P997 000 was allocated, out of which over P501 000 or 51 per cent had been spent.

He added that the 2023/2024 development estimates thus reflected a slight increase of over P10 million, which was three per cent of the current financial year’s revised allocation of just over P977 million.

Additionally, Minister Morwaeng highlighted that a number of changes had been made in the ministry, consequent to the public sector rationalisation exercise conducted last year.

He said institutionalisation of the evaluations with a view to inform decision-making were also kick-started to help fast-track the transformation efforts towards attainment of Vision 2036.

“A critical building block is the development of the National Evaluation Plan (NEP) which lays down a guide on evaluation areas prioritised for the nation together with their proposed timelines.

The process to develop the NEP will be finalised before end of March this year with its implementation set for the 2023/24 financial year,” he said.

Such efforts, he said, would address implementation challenges heading into the two-year Transitional National Development Plan.

Minister Morwaeng said government started the development of the National Transformation Strategy (NTS) in 2019 in its continued efforts to diversify and transform the economy in order to achieve higher prosperity.

“The NTS’ major intent is to ignite transformation whilst influencing future planning and ensuring that development planning is seamless and integrated,” he said.

In other issues, he said the ministry was developing the project and contract management frameworks in order to enhance project management capacity across government.

He added that the ministry was also developing the Botswana Business Excellence Model, which would assist in improving programmes, projects and service delivery.

“The purpose of Botswana Business Excellence Model project is to come up with an approach on how Botswana could address challenges of poor implementation and service delivery because of disconnected systems that do not have defined operating business model standards,” he said.

The project, he said, was implemented in partnership with BNPC. ENDS