08 Mar 2023

Development of the Land Information System (LIS) has enabled government to generate some reliable data for land management, Minister of Lands and Water Affairs, Dr Kefentse Mzwinila has said.

Presenting the ministry’s budget estimates for the 2023/2024 financial year on Tuesday, Dr Mzwinila said the LIS was now operational to provide services that included generation and printing of secure land titles for Batswana.

He said such improvements in the management of land information was certainly beneficial to the nation because that it facilitated equitable land distribution and allowed for reservation of land for other competing uses equally important for the economy.

Again, he said LIS was also a key driver of the 4th Industrial Revolution because it provided a platform for efficient management of the land resource through transformation of the land sector to digital processes.

He added that the LIS was, together with the National Spatial Plan (NSP) created and approved to provide guidance for planning future developments and investment patterns in the country.

“Both plans had to come up with the concept of regionalisation, crafted along the natural environment that characterises the country and aligning the National Development Plan to the NSP recommendations will ensure that developments are done in a more coordinated and sustainable manner,” Dr Mzwinila said.

He said a total of 52 277 plots had been allocated in tribal land from April 1 last year to February 28 this year, adding the 2022/2023 allocation far surpassed the historic record of the past two decades which averaged 8 630 plots allocated annually.

“The ministry has made a decision to outsource core activities such as the preparation of detailed layout plans and plot surveying in order to speed up the process to allocate land,” he said.

As such, he said the plan was to allocate the 6 000 plots that were currently being surveyed in the 2023/2024 financial year.

The minister had requested Parliament to approve over P7.1 billion out of which P6 billion would cover the ministry’s development budget and use P1.1 billion for the recurrent budget.

Dr Mzwinila said the largest share of the development budget was allocated to the water supply pipelines programme, with projects to be financed from the programme including among others the six ongoing components of the North South Carrier. ENDS