Plan to wean off private sector speeds up

Brian Benza
Staff Writer | Tuesday September 7, 2010 00:00

 

At a three-day workshop, which started in Phakalane yesterday, the Minister of Trade and Industry, Dorcas Makgato-Malesu, said Government's objective is to see the private sector operating more independently so as to compete openly in both domestic and global markets.

'This workshop is long overdue,' she said.  'Diversification has been the longstanding agenda of our country for a long time dating back as far as NDP5.

'This initiative is a milestone towards providing a more unified approach to achieving the goal of private sector growth together with the ultimate goal of economic diversification and poverty eradication.'

At the end of the workshop, participants - who include captains of industry and heads of parastatals and government departments - will be expected to draft a Strategy and a Master Action Plan.

The Ministry of Trade will oversee their implementation, reporting to the Vice President who will chair a ministerial committee on economic diversification.

The workshop is also expected to package the EDD Master Action Plan into a balanced score card for effective implementation and monitoring.

The development of the medium to long-term strategy, which comes as a result of a Presidential directive, follows the formulation of a short-term EDD strategy last March.

The short-term strategy involves the use of administrative interventions to promote domestic production through the use of local procurement, targeted domestic production and consumption and citizen economic empowerment strategies.

Among the chief motivation factors for the EDD is the country's huge import bill that currently stands at P15 billion per annum.

'There is need, therefore, to leverage this enormous government purchasing power to diversify the economy by deliberately promoting the utilisation of locally manufactured goods and services through government procurement,' the minister said.

'The strategy should help expand and strengthen private sector participation in Botswana's development as well as identify constraints in cultivating a generally supportive business climate and the necessary institutional reforms to support private sector development.'

In 2008, the private sector developed the Private Sector Development Strategy (PSDS) that identified and proposed specific interventions for removing barriers to private sector involvement in trade expansion and productivity improvement.

The strategy also responded to the aspirations of Vision 2016 and the theme of the National Development Plan 10 (NDP 10 2009-2016).

Vision 2016 aspires to achieve its targets through sustainable growth and a diversified economy with mining, agriculture, industry, manufacturing, services and tourism playing leading roles.

As a theme, NDP 10 aims at 'Creating The Conditions for Accelerated Private Sector Growth In Order To Reach Vision 2016 Targets'.