Parly Questions
Mpho Mokwape | Thursday March 12, 2015 16:58
Response: The National Development Bank (NDB) finances high-risk ventures such as agricultural projects and startup businesses, which are very sensitive to natural disasters such as drought, and/or diseases.
In addition, the Bank has equally been adversely affected by reduced economic activity. The impact of these factors is increased in nonperforming loans, which has affected the level of profitability of the Bank. As a result, the Bank is anticipating reporting a loss for the financial year ended March 2014.
Despite these challenges, the Bank continues to be a going concern and is fully executing its mandate, as validated by the external auditors who have issued a clean audit report.
It is our expectation that the Bank’s financial results for the year ended March 2014 will be published during this month, after they have gone through all necessary corporate governance approval structures.
The Bank is migrating to a new Integrated Banking System and this required a detailed audit to be done, taking into account the transition from the old system to the new system. Consequently, the Bank experienced a delay in the production of the 2014 financial results.
During this process, all key stakeholders were updated accordingly and approval granted for the extension of time, at different levels of governance. It is worth noting that in the past years the Bank’s financial statements were always published within the six months period as required by the National Development Bank Act. The Bank was also profitable and was paying dividends to Government.
The Bank’s loan approvals are done taking into account the need to manage its liquidity within acceptable levels. In this regard, the Bank has decided to implement various initiatives in order to ensure that its liquidity position is adequate. Some of the initiatives it has decided to implement are as follows:
While consideration of other loan applications is continuing, the Bank decided to suspend receipt of loan applications for business loans and Bonno product, primarily because they have reached their annual budget targets and are currently being reviewed.
The Bank continues to consider farming loan applications, except for dry land seasonal loans. These are only processed within the farming period as prescribed by the Ministry of Agriculture. This is to ensure that farmers are aligned to the ploughing season and repay their loans timely.
The Bank decided to implement a robust collection strategy. Finally, the Bank decided to review its credit policy.
This situation is expected to normalise after April 2015, once the review process has been completed.
I am further informed that NOB staff at different levels - Management, Union Executive and other staff, is constantly consulted on the Bank’s financial and operational performance, through various internal communications structures. This is in addition to the weekly updates to the general staff by the CEO.
Question: Biggie G Butale
Asked the Minister of Education and Skills Development if she is aware that the Centres of Excellence in various Secondary Schools are not adequately equipped; if so, what steps are being taken to resource these centres with the right equipment, qualified coaches and personnel and when can such resourcing be expected.
Response: I am aware that Centres of Excellence in various Secondary Schools are not adequately equipped both in terms of equipment and human capita.
The Ministry in collaboration with the Ministry of Youth, Sport and Culture is exploring ways of improving resourcing of the centres of excellence. Meanwhile the process of identifying teacher coaches to be redeployed to man the Centres of excellence is ongoing.
I must admit that resourcing of these centers of Excellence remains a challenge owing to budgetary constraints.
Question: Ngaka M. Ngaka Asked the Minister of Health if she is aware that parents and guardians of children admitted at Government hospitals such as Princess Marina Hospital are not provided with bedding; if so, how will she address this anomaly and every morning these parents clean the pediatric ward without protective clothing; if so, why are they not supplied with protective clothing
Response: I am not aware that parents and guardians of children admitted to Government facilities such as Princess Marina Hospital are not provided with bedding or required to do cleaning without protective clothing.
Parents and guardians of hospitalised children are given mattresses and bedding. Occasionally there might be shortage of bedding but this usually cuts across the whole hospital of Princess Marina Hospital.Cleaning in Government hospitals is done by either private companies or Government employed Cleaners. For instance in PMH cleaning has been outsourced to a private company since 2011. Notwithstanding the above, there is need to strengthen the monitoring of service level agreements to ensure compliance.
Question: Tawana Moremi
Asked the Minister of Transport and Communications to state the rationale in offering Botswana Telecommunications Corporation shares to foreigners/noncitizens.
Response: the Botswana Telecommunications Corporation limited (BTCL) shares are in fact exclusively for Botswana citizens as well as 1000/0 Botswana citizen owned companies. No foreigner will be allowed to buy the shares either directly or indirectly. My Ministry through the project managers, Public Enterprises Evaluation & Privatisation Agency (PEEPA), are in the process of putting in place a robust mechanism that will ensure that Botswana citizens and Botswana citizen-owned companies trade the BTCL shares exclusively amongst themselves.
Furthermore the shares that are reserved for the BTCL employees will be exclusively for Botswana citizen employees and no foreigner employees will be allowed to procure these directly or indirectly.