Budget cuts will curb tax increases - Matambo

Speaking at the Budget Pitso at Boipuso Hall in Gaborone last Thursday, Matambo emphasised that cuts in the 2012/13 budget would focus on recurrent spending where previous studies have suggested widespread inefficiencies and wastage.
"The last thing I personally want to do is to keep increasing taxes or to keep resorting to this because that would have a negative effect, especially on companies that should be reinvesting their profits to grow the economy," he told scores of stakeholders at the Budget Pitso.

"We have to find other ways and spending is an area where we have to work hard.  The area where a lot of work has to be done in this spending is under the recurrent budget.  It's not easy, but this is where I believe we have to reduce."
Using NDP 9's fiscal rule of a 70:30 ratio in spending, recurrent expenditure would eat up P27.3 billion of next year's targeted budget while the development budget would amount to P11.7 billion.