A budget bereft

Mmegi Editor | Tuesday February 7, 2017 11:36

Where Batswana, particularly in Selebi Phikwe, expected to hear how the revenues in 2017/18 would be spent to alleviate the fall-out from BCL Mine’s closure, Matambo only repeated statements made in November about the Phikwe revitalisation strategy.

Where nearly all eyes were on the Finance Minister’s fervently seeking a comprehensive response to the wave of job losses in mining and parastatals, Matambo stuck to the script, effectively reproducing his October 2016 presentation to the National Assembly about NDP 11. In fact, the Finance Minister repeated, for emphasis, that Government’s role was not to create jobs directly, through the civil service, but rather to facilitate the private sector’s development. That line of rhetoric can only sound condescending and uncaring to the thousands in the street, who know perfectly well that Government has a range of interventions in its arsenal within which to assist them in terms of school fees, education, health care and other opportunities. The speech sounded as though it was written in a vacuum, far removed from the reality on the ground and thus totally unresponsive to the emerging and urgent concerns Batswana are currently grappling with.

Traditionally, the budget speech goes far beyond the numbers and forecasting. It is an opportunity for the Finance Minister, representing the nexus of the fiscal and political authority, to take positions and make announcements on issues of national importance. Past budget speeches have addressed emerging issues such as household debt, the need for climate sensitive agriculture, quality of democracy and others. This one was bent on regurgitating the October 2016 NDP 11 speech to Parliament and avoiding pertinent issues, even positive developments such as the prospects of a bumper harvest and alleviation of the national water crisis. Even as Matambo stuck to NDP 11, explaining its priorities and objectives, his speech fell short several times of explaining, clearly and with finality, how the 2017/18 budget aimed to achieve these priorities and objectives. One glaring failure is the fact that under the priority of “diversified sources of revenue,” Matambo’s sole solution here is a revision of taxes, licence and permit fees and VAT exemptions. How the private sector, already reeling from the impact of the mine closures, parastatal rationalisations and overall low demand in the economy, is magically expected to pay more in taxes and licences, remains to be seen. Another is how Matambo speaks of Local Economic Development and then announces that a pilot project is underway to extend the payment of property rates to rural areas “in order to generate revenues for local authorities”. There are good points in the budget, particularly around continued spending in education, energy, water and others to support investment and growth. But all in all, his speech was a mule's kick on the shin of many suffering citizens.

Today’s thought

“The cure is not more Government spending, but helping businesses create jobs.

 – Brian Sandoval