LEATHER PARK A REALITY FOR LOBATSE

Keikantse Lesemela | Monday February 17, 2014 15:58

 

The Local Enterprise Authority (LEA) has indicated that the feasibility study for leather the park project in Lobatse will be completed during the course of the next financial year starting in April 2014. Last week, LEA Communications Director, Nyaladzi Kutjwe told The Monitor that they have embarked on the necessary groundwork required to engage independent consultants to validate the feasibility of the establishment of the Leather park project.

“It is anticipated that the feasibility validation exercise will be completed during the course of the next financial year thereafter the implementation milestone will be finalised”, said Kutjwe.

The project is estimated to cost about P280 million and has the capacity to create 5,000 jobs. The government has viewed the manufacturing sector as the potential sector for economic growth and employment creation.

“The sector has the potential to contribute towards economic growth and employment creation.” In his 2014/15 Budget speech, the minister of finance and development planning, Kenneth Matambo said government would continue to promote domestic and foreign direct investment into the sector and provide targeted fiscal incentives to major manufacturers of a leather park with an effluent treatment plant and tanneries.

Currently there is only one leather tanning plant in the country, which imports all its raw materials of wet blues and tanning chemicals.  However, the study conducted by LEA in 2012 states that almost all collected hides and skins in Botswana are destined for the export market through the Botswana Meat Commission (BMC) but this is hindered by lack of a primary processing leather plant locally.

The report also stated that the markets for local raw hides and skins are in South Africa, Namibia and China. The export bill stood at P46 million with two third consisting of raw hides and skins in 2012. In 2008, hides and skins exports were valued at more than P30 million and in 2010 the figure was P40 million. The Botswana cattle population in 2010 stood at 2.5 million with annual slaughter of 10% of the animal herd. This translates to an output of about 250,000 hides per annum.