Budget Speech: What is up Matambo�s sleeve?
Dithapelo Keorapetse | Friday January 30, 2015 14:50
This week starting Tuesday the 30th, Parliament held a workshop for Members of Parliament (MPs) on the analysis of the 2015/2016 Botswana National Budget at the Gaborone International Conference Center. Officially opened by the Speaker of the National Assembly, the seminar featured the Minister of Finance and Development Planning Kenneth Matambo, his juniors at the ministry and the Botswana Institute of Development Policy Analysis and former Chairperson of the Public Accounts Committee as resource persons. This piece doesn’t in anyway seek to pre-empt the finance minister as the writer is privy to some of the information. The workshop sought to assist MPs with knowledge, skills or tools to interrogate the budget proposal by the minister. It has also, in part, answered the above captioned question. Macroeconomic framework, macroeconomic outlook, revenue forecast, overview of the national budget, budget management, the role of parliament in driving implementation of development programmes/projects, budget analysis and revenue analysis were some of the topic covered at the workshop. An argument could be made that it was an important colloquium for a subject that is technical to some if not most MPs.
The budget is very important as it answers the fundamental political question of who gets what, where, when and perhaps how. For our case, the national annual budget purports to further Botswana’s development goals espoused in both the National Development Plan (and Districts Development Plans) and Vision 2016.
It touches on a variety of economic/financial issues including, but not limited to, the amount of revenue and its sources such as general taxes, tax from mining, dividends, royalties, loans and grants inter alia.
The budget touches on the division of the national cake in terms of the recurrent budget and the development budget, taxation issues, fiscal and monetary policy, domestic and international economic outlook, employment policy, citizen empowerment, business and other related matters.
The inadequacy of consultations on the budget concerned most MPs who aired their views. Whilst the finance minister assured members that the consultation process include the Budget Strategy Paper, Budget Dipitso, consultation of various stakeholders such as the local authorities, Ntlo Ya Dikgosi and Parliament, MPs were concerned that the said consultations are not meaningful as stakeholders contributions are not reflected in the budget outcome. It is not easy for ordinary people to see their development priorities of their areas reflected in the budget speech. The speech seldom speaks to an ordinary Motswana.
This may partly explain why trust and confidence levels on MPs and parliament are according to Afrobarometer and vision 2016 survey low at around 40% (Vision 2016 survey). The people don’t have confidence on their MPs and parliament, in addition to their lack of the same in unions and political parties.
There seemed to be a consensus especially among MPs who aren’t in the executive that it is hard and close to impossible for parliament to change the budget. It is difficult for them to get their constituencies development priorities on the agenda of the economic high command in the finance ministry.
Many factors were advanced as reasons for the impediment; the legislative-executive fusion in which the executive dominates in parliament, the independence and power of parliament, resources constraints of parliament and the tradition of the political executive and the bureaucratic-technocrats dominated development planning among others.
His Excellency the President has set the tone for the budget speech through his State of the Nation Address late last year. There won’t be much deviation from what he set as priority areas and this may be evident in the allocation of both the recurrent (about 70%) and the development (about 30%) budget. Good economic outlook may be reported in that the country is emerging from the recession. Uncertainty may be highlighted in the international economic outlook; Eurozone is experiencing challenges, China is in slow growth while the emerging economies such as BRICs are good and the USA (US State of the Union Address by Barrack Obama) is also doing well.
Growth in revenue and expenditure (not exceeding 30% of GDP) and growth of GDP should be expected from the Minister’s budget speech. One expect education and health and local government and rural development to get substantial amount of money.
All in all, after the budget speech, as is usually the case, many people’s pockets would still be empty; it is not usually the people’s budget.
As long as the economy is not diversified through mineral and other resources beneficiation and it is not integrated at a domestic level to higher degree, we will have a jobless growth, skewed and scant socio-economic development with inadequate access to services, business and economic opportunities, lack of access to better education and health.