Drastic merger of public enterprises hatches
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The Minister of Investment, Trade and Industry Bogolo Kenewendo has revealed that the ministry has initiated a process that look into the possibility of merging various quasi-government enterprises owing to duplication and overlapping of mandates.
There have been calls from various quarters, including legislators and the business community over the need to merge some ministries in a bid to improve efficiency and profitability. “It has been observed that the mandates of some of the parastatals are converging resulting in some overlaps and duplications,” said Kenewendo, who was appointed as a trade minister at the beginning of April.
“A rationalisation exercise is ongoing in that regard, and the exercise will go a long way in eliminating duplication of efforts across the ministry’s parastatals where existent, culminating in improved service quality,” While a backbencher, Kenewendo had made her believes known that a number of parastatals do have overlapping mandates therefore requiring a rationalisation that would produce efficiency.
Parastatals that have been under microscope include Citizen Entrepreneurial Development Agency (CEDA), Botswana Development Corporation (BDC), as well as National Development Bank (NDB) which are government owned funding institutions. BDC was established in 1970, as government investment arm and as main agency for commercial and industrial development. BDC’s primary mandate is to drive the industrialisation of the country by providing financial assistance to investors with commercially viable projects.
BDC provides both debt and equity financing to commercially viable projects that perform one or more of the following functions; pioneer new industries; unlock value in existing industries, stimulate private sector growth and foster linkages with the local industry, drive diversification and exports, and create significant employment. Meanwhile CEDA, which was created in 2001, has been mandated to provide financial and technical support for business development with a view to promote viable and sustainable citizen owned business enterprises.
CEDA was is established to address the need for coherent and holistic support for the development of small, medium and large scale enterprises through the soft window and package offered through the subsidiaries. CEDA offers funding for capital expenditure, stock or working capital in new and existing business ventures. It also offers training and mentoring for new and seasoned entrepreneurs and business advisory services to entrepreneurs in various skills as identified through the needs assessment that is conducted during project monitoring.
The monitoring, business advisory is also carried out by Local Enterprise Authority (LEA) another parastatal formed in 2004. According to the Small Business Act , which established the entity, LEA’s mandate is to promote entrepreneurship and SMME development through; providing business development services inter alia through; screening, business plan facilitation, training and mentoring as well as identifying business opportunities for existing and future SMMEs among others.
While NBD, the oldest of them all was established in 1963 during the colonial era, with a mandate to provide sustainable value creating financial services and partnerships that support economic development of the country. NDB has recently been going through a difficult financial phase. Few weeks ago, the beleaguered bank approached the Parliamentary Committee on Public Enterprises and Statutory Bodies to lobby for government recapitalisation.
EFFICIENCY AND PROFITABILITY: CASE FOR PARASTATAL S MERGER
In 2016, while speaking Grant Thornton Private Growth Business Awards, former cabinet minister, Charles Tibone indicated his lack of faith in the public enterprises in terms of their growth potential owing to their continued non-performance. “What is even more concerning is that the majority of these parastatals businesses are chronically unprofitable. They operate on negative returns on investment or on life support from Government through subsidies,” he said then.
“A case can be made for parastatals that provide a social service like Water Utilities Corporation (WUC) or those which regulate sectors such as Botswana Communication Regulatory Authority (BOCRA) or Civil Aviation Authority (CAAB).” Tibone does not see any reason for government to continue keeping public enterprises which have become weak after being owned by government for decades.
“One may ask; do we really need a national airline? Have we not done enough to demonstrate that passenger traffic exists? Nigeria, The United States of America, Hong Kong and many other countries do not have national airlines and yet traffic into these states remains strong,” he said. “Is it vital that National Development Bank (NDB), Botswana Development Corporation (BDC), Botswana Savings Bank (BSB) and Botswana Meat Commission (BMC), to mention just a few, should continue to be Government owned?”
Tibone, who resigned as Assistant Minister of Finance in 2011, and left his law making position in 2014, argued that if compared, growth profiles of the BDC and BIHL, both of which are in property and financial services, among other investments, one will notice that one zigzags up and down while the other has an upward trajectory. “It will not be difficult to guess which one is parastatal,” he said.
“Massive injection of state resources into that entity has not guaranteed growth. This evidence therefore leads one to the observation that there is a distinct prospect that the privatisation of a number of Government parastatals would not simply lead to quantitative growth of our private sector but possibly a dramatic transformation of our economy.”
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ENVIRONMENT ISSUES: Masisi asks Virginia for help
President Mokgweetsi Masisi says the issue of sustainable natural resources management has always been an important part of Botswana’s national development agenda.
Masisi was speaking this week on the occasion of a public lecture at Virginia Polytechnic, under theme, “Merging Conservation, Democracy and Sustainable Development in Botswana.”
Botswana, according to Masisi, holds the view that the environment is fragile and as such, must be managed and given the utmost protection to enable the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
“It is necessary that we engage one another in the interchange of ideas, perspectives, visualizations of social futures, and considerations of possible strategies and courses of action for sustainable development,” said Masisi.
On the other hand, dialogue, in the form of rigorous democratic discourse among stakeholders presents another basis for reconfiguring how people act on their environments, with a view to conserving its resources that “we require to meet our socio-economic development needs on a sustainable basis,” Masisi told attendees at the public lecture.
He said government has a keen interest in understanding the epidemiology and ecology of diseases of both domestic and wild animals. “It is our national interest to forestall the dire consequences of animal diseases on our communities livelihoods.”
President Masisi hoped that both Botswana and Virginia could help each other in curbing contagious diseases of wildlife.
“We believe that Virginia Tech can reasonably share their experiences, research insights and advances in veterinary sciences and medicines, to help us build capacity for knowledge creation and improve efforts of managing and containing contagious diseases of wildlife. The ground is fertile for entering into such a mutually beneficial partnership.”
When explaining environmental issues further, Masisi said efforts of conservation and sustainable development might at times be hampered by the emergence and recurrence of diseases when pathogens mutate and take host of more than one species.
“Water pollution also kills aquatic life, such as fish, which is one of humanity’s much deserved sources of food. In this regard, One Health Approach imposes ecological responsibility upon all of us to care for the environment and the bio-diversity therein.”
He said the production and use of animal vaccines is an important space and tool for conservation, particularly to deal with trans-border animal diseases.
“In Botswana, our 43-year-old national premier pharmaceutical institution called Botswana Vaccine Institute has played its role well. Through its successful production of highly efficacious Foot and Mouth vaccines, the country is able to contain this disease as well as supply vaccines to other countries in the sub-region.:
He has however declared that there is need for more help, saying “We need more capacitation to deal with and contain other types of microbial that affect both animals and human health.”
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Masisi saddened by deaths of elephant attacks
President Mokgweetsi Masisi has expressed a strong worry over elephants killing people in Botswana. When speaking in Virginia this week, Masisi said it is unfortunate that Batswana have paid a price with their own blood through being attacked by elephants.
“Communities also suffer unimaginable economic losses yearly when their crops are eaten by the elephants. In spite of such incidents of human-elephant conflict, our people embrace living together with the animals. They fully understand wildlife conservation and its economic benefits in tourism.”
In 2018, Nthobogang Samokwase’s father was attacked by an elephant when travelling from the fields, where he stayed during the cropping season.
It was reported that the man couldn’t run because of his age. He was found trampled by the elephant and was pronounced dead upon arrival at the hospital.
In the same year, in Maun, a 57-year-old British woman was attacked by an elephant at Boro and died upon arrival at the hospital. The woman was with her Motswana partner, and were walking dogs in the evening.
Last month, a Durban woman named Carly Marshall survived an elephant attack while on holiday in the bush in Botswana. She was stabbed by one of the elephant’s tucks through the chest and was left with bruises. Marshall also suffered several fractured ribs from the ordeal.
President Masisi Botswana has the largest population of African elephants in the world, totaling more than 130 000. “This has been possible due to progressive conservation policies, partnerships with the communities, and investment in wildlife management programmes.”
In order to benefit further from wildlife, Masisi indicated that government has re-introduced controlled hunting in 2019 after a four-year pause. “The re-introduction of hunting was done in an open, transparent and democratic way, giving the communities an opportunity to air their views. The funds from the sale of hunting quota goes towards community development and elephant conservation.”
He stressed that for conservation to succeed, the local people must be involved and derive benefits from the natural resources within their localities.
“There must be open and transparent consultations which involve all sectors of the society. It is against this backdrop that as a country, we lead the continent on merging conservation, democracy and sustainable development.”
Masisi stated that Botswana is open to collaborative opportunities, “particularly with identifiable partners such as Virginia Tech, in other essential areas such as conservation, and the study of the interplay among the ecology of diseases of wild animals and plants, and their effects on human health and socio-economic development.”
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Gov’t commit to injecting more funds in fighting HIV
Minister for State President Kabo Morwaeng says government will continue to make resources available in terms of financial allocations and human capital to ensure that Botswana achieves the ideal of eradicating HIV and AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.
Morwaeng was speaking this morning in Gaborone at the High-Level Advocacy event to accelerate HIV Prevention in Botswana. He said the National AIDS and Health Promotion Agency (NAPHA), in partnership with UNAIDS, UN agencies, the Global Fund and PEPFAR, have started a process of developing transition readiness plan for sustainability of HIV prevention and treatment programmes.
“It is important for us, as a country that has had a fair share of donor support in the response to an epidemic such as HIV and AIDS, to look beyond the period when the level of assistance would have reduced, or ceased, thus calling for domestic financing for all areas which were on donor support.”
Morwaeng said this is important as the such a plan will guarantee that all the gains accrued from the response with donor support will be sustained until the end when “we reach the elimination of HIV and AIDS as a public health threat by 20230,” he said.
“I commit to continue support efforts towards strengthened HIV prevention, accentuating HIV primary prevention and treatment as prevention towards Zero New Infections, Zero Stigma, Discrimination and Zero AIDS related death, to end AIDS in Botswana.”
He reiterated that government commits to tackle legislative, policy and programming challenges that act as barriers to the achievement of the goal of ending AIDS as a public health threat.
In the financial year 2022/2023, a total of 119 Civil Society Organizations, including Faith Based Organizations, were contracted with an amount of P100 million to implement HIV and NCDs prevention activities throughout the country, and the money was drawn from the Consolidated Fund.
Through an upcoming HIV Prevention Symposium, technical stakeholders will use outcomes to develop the Botswana HIV Prevention Acceleration Road Map for 2023-2025.
Morwaeng stated that government will support and ensure that Botswana plays its part achieving the road map. He said there is need to put hands on the deck to ensure that Botswana sustains progress made so far in the fight against HIV and AIDS.
“There are tremendous achievements thus far to, reach and surpass the UNAIDS fast track targets of 95%- 95%- 95% by the year 2025. As reflected by the BAIS preliminary results of 2021, we now stand at 95- 98- 98 against the set targets.”
“These achievements challenge us to now shift our gears and strive to know who are the remaining 5% for those aware of their HIV status, 2% of enrolment on treatment by those aware of their status and 2% of viral suppression by those on treatment.”
Explaining this further, Morwaeng said shift in gears should extend to coming up with robust strategies of determining where these remaining people are as well as how they will be reached with the necessary services.
“These are just some of the many variables that are required to ensure that as a country, we are well positioned to reaching the last mile of our country’s response to the HIV and AIDS pandemic.”