Guma guns for parastatals
News
One time Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) Chairman and current Tati West legislator Samson Guma Moyo has made an emphatic plea to Minister of Finance and Development Planning, Kenneth Matambo advising the slashing and consolidation of loss-making parastatals to arrest the careening budget deficit.
Moyo said the country should not keep an imprudent system of pumping money year in and year out into unsuccessful state funded entities including Botswana Meat Commission (BMC), Botswana Railways, Air Botswana, National Development Bank (NDB) and Botswana Savings Bank (BSB) among others, consequently throwing the country into a self-created budget deficit.
He also said that of the 42 state funded parastatals, a majority of them are not giving government any value and steps must be taken to cut unnecessary state expenditure highlighting Local Enterprise Authority (LEA) which he says has minimal impact in the economy but gobbles and hoards government funds.
Moyo advised Minister of Finance and Development Planning, Kenneth Matambo to provide strategic thinking, employ a bold attitude and to tighten up even if making unpopular decisions makes him equally unpopular adding that government can only be the catalyst for change.
Moyo said that the combined weight of most of the country’s 42 government aided parastatals unnecessarily contribute to the country’s budget deficit.
He continued to say that the government funds are tied to assets and the country’s balance sheet cannot construct infrastructure such as railways urging it to look to the private sector.
The ostensibly emphatic Moyo, added that building an economy takes years while destroying it could take two days.
Speaking on the sidelines of Parliament business, Moyo also proposed the streamlining and consolidation of parastatals with similar or overlapping mandates. He proposed that since the country’s economy is crowded with similar parastatals and loss making state funded agencies such as Botswana Railways, Botswana Post as well as Air Botswana which all trade in logistics, they can thus all be consolidated.
He also continued that those financial institutions such as Citizen Entrepreneurial Development Agency (CEDA), Botswana Savings Bank (BSB) as well as the National Development Bank (NDB) can either be made lean, disposed off or consolidated to make them effective and profiteer as they compete for the same space with each other and private lending institutions.
He also proposed that government should make hay while the sun still shines by forestalling borrowing internally or externally to finance its budget in times when revenue from minerals and taxes dwindle. He says that Botswana should always look home first and does not need at any point to draw funds from its foreign reserves urging the state to look at other less dicey means such as disposing its assets to entities such as pension funds. He says that the immediate benefit will be that government will immediately be flush with cash from the transaction which should be pumped straight into government revenue stream to finance state projects.
He continues that government should then proceed to rent and use the assets it has sold such as its high rise buildings, removing itself from being liable to maintenance of the buildings as is currently the case. He also says that another benefit is that government will continuously earn revenue from the taxing the new owners of the property.
Moyo also said that another option is that government should also look into its tax regime and reduce the car corporate tax and asses the possibility of charging tax on turnover.
He says that charging tax on turnover is the same as charging tax on Value Added Tax (VAT) and the immediate advantage of it is companies will pay as and when they make profit and that government will have immediate cash in its coffers without waiting for year end. He says that this can be achieved if government reduces the tax rate and proceed to charge it on turnover or sales and not on net profit.
He said that this tax regime is beneficial as it prevents the passing of extended periods of time before government can collect due taxes. The result will be such that governments projects will be spurred on with the ever availability of funds.
He also says that the current tax regime is liable to manipulation because companies can look for any other expenses to include in the expenditures while charging taxes on turnover is near fool-proof as tax will be paid in shorter amounts of time.
News
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.”
News
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.”
featured
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.”