Matambo brings cheer to citizen businesses
Mbongeni Mguni | Tuesday February 3, 2015 15:34
Delivering his budget speech in Parliament, Matambo said in addition, each ministry would be required to reserve 30 percent of its annual projects budget for wholly citizen-owned businesses.
“Inclusive growth cannot be achieved without empowering citizens to take an active role in economic activities,” Matambo said referring to the main driver of the new development agenda.
“It is for this reason that government continues to make concerted efforts to empower citizens in order to benefit from economic growth.”
Under the “inclusive growth” driver – first revealed in the budget strategy paper last October – government spending going forward will be designed to “ensure economic growth is accompanied by the creation of significant employment creation”.
The new changes to citizen preference thresholds were also accompanied by news of increases in the budget for maintenance as well as the reactivation of several projects that had been left on the backburner in recent years due to the belt-tightening.
According to Matambo, for the 2015/15 financial year, P2.42 billion will be set aside for maintenance under both the recurrent and development budget. In the 2013/14 budget, P1.77 billion was allocated for maintenance, which was designated for the first time as a spending priority, while the 2014/15 budget did not specify an allocation.
Of the total in the 2015/16 budget, P978.50 million or 40.4 percent is for maintenance of buildings, P705.59 million for maintenance of equipment including computer systems whilst P374.59 million has been set aside for road maintenance. The balance of P366.13 million is for vehicles and other maintenance.
Projects resurfacing in the budget include the Zambezi Integrated Agro-Commercial Development project under which water will be extracted from the Zambezi to supply 20,000 hectares of greenfield farming in Kazungula.
Matambo is proposing that the Zambezi Water Development be allocated P200 million and the Pandamatenga Infrastructure Development Project P100 million in the forthcoming financial year.
Citizen businesses will also benefit from a litany of smaller projects proposed for funding by Matambo, a change from the previous years when the budget was dominated by big-ticket items such as dam and power station construction.
The smaller projects, some of which fall within the exclusive reservations for citizen companies, include upgrading of roads, improvement of road signals, bridge construction, land servicing, ICT provision and others. Matambo said efforts towards similarly empowering Small, Medium and Micro Enterprises (SMMEs) would continue.
“Government is committed to creating a favourable environment for the development of SMMEs, as part of citizen empowerment in the country. “However, the success of the SMMEs will depend on various factors such as their ability to deliver quality products to clients, delivery of goods and services on time, and reasonable pricing of such goods and services,” he said.