With the collapse of the High-Level Consultative Forum, the country’s private sector has frequently bemoaned the detachment of government from pressing business issues. The Forum, chaired by the presidents of both the country and Business Botswana, was the premium platform for discussing interventions around the ease of doing business. Business Botswana is the country’s main business lobby group representing most of the country’s private sector.
Together with the end of Cabinet’s Doing Business sub-committee a few years ago, the private sector has felt left out in the cold, at the mercy of a rising number of regulatory institutions and tightening laws such as those around KYC, without an established platform to engage government.
The new government came in with the promise of being a listening administration, bringing hope to the business community. However, the new government also came in with the promise of securing a P4,000 minimum wage and more jobs.
The private sector has numerous challenges with the business operating environment that has developed over the years, mainly around increasing bureaucracy and rising levies/taxes. Government, meanwhile, is overloaded with the responsibility of driving growth whilst running out of fiscal space.
The private sector-led economic growth is an ideal both sides agree upon, but one that requires a Herculean effort to attain.
Thus, this week’s High-Level Engagement Forum between President Duma Boko and Business Botswana, was therefore a keenly watched-for interaction between interests and approaches.
Business Botswana president, Neo Nwako, spoke of the private sector only having “one bullet” and having to be “marksmen” in their initial engagement with Boko on the challenges being faced in driving growth in the country.
“We have to tell His Excellency as it is and tell him about the plight of the private sector and the business community,” he said.
“This is a day of reckoning and I want to tell you the truth about the private sector; we are not going to fry the air.
“For the past 30 years, we have seen a very robust, successful private sector but the truth is that in the last 15, somehow we decided to derail all that, though there were melodious songs of having a private sector-led economy.
“We have seen a lack of dialogue, lack of contestation of ideas and proliferation of state-owned entities crowding out the private sector.
“That has become the norm in the last 15 years and we have been disingenuous and dishonest with ourselves.”
Digging into his legal background, Boko quickly conceded that the country’s laws were not optimally crafted for businesses to succeed. However, he threw the challenge back to businesses to formulate the laws required for private sector-led growth.
“The assumption is always that the people in Parliament and government must originate laws, but they don’t have the experience or exposure that you have.
“You understand the problems intimately and are the best people to offer solutions to these.
“I’m going to suggest to you that you formulate the types of laws that you want to govern you and regulate your operations. “When you have put together these proposals, then submit them to the relevant ministries that can bring this to Cabinet and Cabinet can draft the laws that go with what you have proposed.”
Boko said the private sector was “guilty of a dereliction of duty” in that it had handed over the responsibility to design business laws to legislators. “You are the true legislators; most of them do not know about running businesses,” he said.
“People who are running businesses and have experience and exposure are outsourcing the function of making laws that regulate their space to people who are ignorant of the challenges of that space.”
Boko said in his vision, he would like to see all upcoming laws go into Parliament on urgency, to reflect the pressing pace of change the economy requires. The President believes change in the business environment and broader economy should be visible within the next three years.
“In the next three years, Botswana should be spectacularly different.
“If we agree that we must do it in the next three years and if we also acknowledge that government operations and methods are outdated, slow, and destitute of agility, then something must give.
“It is urgent and desperate.
“Every law that comes to Parliament must come under urgency; we do not have time.
“We will expose the laws to debate and involve everyone, consult as many as we can, but it is urgent that we change the laws and change them urgently so that you do not come and complain that you are impeded when you want to do business.”
