Pace of 'doing business' reforms a concern

Lesedi Mkhutshwa | Wednesday February 27, 2019 14:11

 

In recent years, Botswana has slipped in the World Bank’s authoritative Doing Business Report, once falling 11 places in 2017.  The last report, released in October 2018, showed Botswana had fallen another five positions in the review covering 190 countries’ business climates. 

While Cabinet has a sub-committee specifically attending to the deficiencies identified by the Doing Business reports and although various initiatives have been started, countries such as Rwanda and Mauritius are opening the gap on Botswana. 

This week, Investment Trade and Industry ministry senior industrial officer, Joconia Malunga said other economies had completed a number of reforms covering a wider range of indicators. These reforms include leveraging on ICT and e-government solutions, which put them ahead of Botswana. 

“Botswana performs unsatisfactorily because the implementation of the reforms has been slow,” he told a Botswana National Productivity Centre review meeting on the country’s competitiveness.

“It is therefore imperative that we come up with a more robust implementing plan with refreshed milestones where those responsible institutions can be held accountable.” 

The Doing Business assessments rank countries against 11 indicators, which include how long it takes to start a business, how quickly electricity can be connected, ease of visas, permits and licences, taxes, access to credit, contract enforcement and ease of crossborder trade. 

“There is a need to look at the most critical indicators such as starting a business, getting electricity and enforcing contracts which continue to perform dismally. “Let us leverage on ICT applications by prioritising re-engineering/streamlining of our processes as captured under the different indicators to eliminate unnecessary steps which do not add value,” Malunga said. 

He noted that some of the challenges Botswana is experiencing involve a lack of understanding the reforms roadmap and lack of communication between different actors. 

Botswana, however, is holding its own in certain indicators of another major global assessment, the annual Global Competitiveness Report (GCR). Botswana National Productivity Centre information and research services manager, Phumzile Thobokwe said the country was highly competitive in its macro economic stability, where it was still ranked number one globally. 

The country continues to do well in GCR indicatators such as labour market, institutions and financial systems. Weak areas include health, market size and infrastructure.