Banks too shy to localise top positions
Staff Writer | Tuesday October 6, 2015 11:55
“We certainly are for local CEO’s but as you know the final decision ends with banks’ board of directors who make the appointments,” Oduetse Motshidisi, the acting governor of Bank of Botswana, said. “We feel the market is in a position now to have citizens as CEOs but banks always come up with reasons as to why they employ expatriates for these positions and we cannot impose people on them.”
Motshidisi was testifying before a parliamentary committee on government parastatals and enterprises. The Statutory Bodies and State Enterprises committee began its meeting yesterday and is chaired by Member of Parliament for Tati East Guma Moyo.
It commenced proceedings by inspecting the books of Bank of Botswana and National Development Bank (NDB).
The acting reserve bank governor told the committee that the Bank wanted banks to hire Batswana as chief executive officers and in other senior management positions because they have the requisite expertise.
Motshidisi was responding to a point raised by a lawmaker who had sought the bank’s position regarding localisation of leadership positions in commercial banks. Most commercial banks have expatriate chief executive officers.
At the same meeting, NDB chief executive Lorato Morapedi said the bank’s proposed privatisation could gather momentum in five years as the bank was under-going transformation.
She said the company made losses for a few years hence the delay in the privatisation. Morapedi said as per the Botswana Stock Exchange listing regulations, the bank should declare profit in three consecutive years for its privatisation to pass. With all the robust performance systems in place now, NDB expect to start making profit. The privatisation model that government has chosen give government 51 percent ownership, while five percent shares are reserved for the bank’s employees and 44 percent floated for the public. Of the 44 percent floated for the public, 30 percent of that will be for citizens while 14 percent will be offered to non-citizens. Meanwhile, Moyo said his committee expected to have examined the books of all government parastatals in two weeks.
“This is just part of the Public Accounts Committee. We will carry on with the examinations in a normal way. We are working with professionals and we expect nothing but professionalism in their submissions,” he said.
Moyo said that the accounting officers should expect demanding questions from the members of the committee.
“We are not intimidating them, so they should feel free to interact with us even when we grill them with questions,” he said.