18 Feb 2014

Member of Parliament for Moshupa, Mr Mokgweetsi Masisi has supported the 2014/2015 budget, saying it has illustrated more on growing economy and job creation.

Debating the 2014/2015 budget proposals on Monday, February 17, Mr Masisi said there was a huge amount of money proposed for construction industry as well as the Agro Zambezi project, which would benefit the country in terms of water and agriculture development.

He said government had put in place the right policies to transform the economy such as e-government, a necessary essential input for growing the economy.

Mr Masisi, who is also the Minister for Presidential Affairs and public Administration, said the proposed budget was a rich tapestry of programmes that government had for Batswana such as Integrated Support Programme for Arable Agricultural Development (ISPAAD) and the Systematic Land Registration (LAPCAS) which were well financed.

He said ISPAAD was a broad based and national programme through, which government sought to increase not only the hectares ploughed but also the yield.

Government, through ISPAAD, wanted to transform and modernise agriculture so that local farmers could move away from the traditional planting methods to the modern way of planting.

In addition, he said LAPCAS heightened the rate of order of land management and also enhanced the value of property for everybody without any discrimination.

On education, he said, a lion share had been allocated to the Ministry of Education and Skills Development because education had grown extremely fast.

For the past 30 years, the government spent an excess of 22 per cent of its Gross Domestic Product on education, which shows the government’s commitment to transform this country into a knowledge based society, he said. He also commended major changes proposed to the HIV policy particularly lowering the threshold of DC4 count.

The Moshupa legislator also applauded the Minister of Finance and Development Planning, Mr Kenneth Matambo for Bank of Botswana’s (BOB) ability to stabilise the inflation which declined from 7.4 per cent in December 2012 to 4.1 per cent in December 2013, which is within BOB’s objective range of 3-6 per cent.

Contributing to the debate, MP for Selebi Phikwe West, Mr Gilson Saleshando dismissed the budget saying government had failed to grow the economy and create employment for Batswana.

He said the government failed to transform the economy from a mining based economy to a diversified economy resulting in its failure to create employment.

Mr Saleshando said government should engage stakeholders like Botswana International University of Science and Technology to help with ideas on how to transform the economy.

On the issue of transport, Mr Saleshando said the local transport business is suffering a serious loss, attributing this to Chinese companies that bring their own machinery and buses when allocated tenders. ENDS