Gov�t to ban retail plastic bags
Gaone Marumoloa | Wednesday April 5, 2017 16:07
The Minister of Environment, Natural Resources, Conservation and Tourism, Tshekedi Khama said the problem with the plastic bag levy was that when it was brought about it was not implementable.
“It was not implementable in the sense that Botswana Unified Revenue Service (BURS) had said there would not be the possibility of collecting the levy at the border. There was also an implication of something to do with Southern African Development Community (SADC) as well,” Khama said.
Before the government announced they would be introducing the levy, retailers never used to charge for a plastic bag.
Khama said the other challenge was that the government did not have the resources to collect the levy from the retailers themselves, therefore the retailers saw this as an opportunity to charge the consumer more money, to the extent that they even determined how much they were selling the plastic bags for.
He continued that the value of shopping from a retailer is further increased by the cost the plastic bag is sold at, which is why the Ministry has decided to proceed with the ban of plastic carrier bags less than 24 microns.
Responding to the Member of Parliament for Gaborone North, Haskins Nkaigwa’s question about how much income has been made annually through the sale of plastics by retailers, the minister said there is no income accrued to government from the sale of plastic bags.
“The value of you shopping from a retailer is now further increased by the cost of the plastic.
That is why we have decided to proceed with the ban of plastic carrier bags less than 24 microns,” Khama said.
Apart from retail carrier bags, other plastic products that would fall under the 24 microns size include garbage bags.
He further said the National Strategy Office (NSO) has also gotten involved so that they try to find a way of collecting that levy because that was the intention. He said that unfortunately despite their efforts, they have not been able to do that with other stakeholders where the authority lies.
Khama said although there is no mechanism at the moment to collect the levy his Ministry has been engaging the Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry on the subject with the latter tasked to meet with plastic bag manufactures in Botswana to see if they could come up with a solution.
“We had given them about six weeks to two months towards the end of last year, and none of them have come back to us with a solution,” the minister said.