mmegi

The long road to parastatal reforms

Sign of the times: Air Botswana has been cash-strapped for years, relying mainly on government subventions
Sign of the times: Air Botswana has been cash-strapped for years, relying mainly on government subventions

Government is considering creating yet another parastatal to monitor the large numbers of struggling parastatals. Are these entities a wasteful weight on the budget or cost-effective saviours for service delivery? The World Bank this week didn’t mince its words. MBONGENI MGUNI & TIMOTHY LEWANIKA write

Despite the numerous voices that have spoken and are still speaking, there’s no debate about where the economy should be headed. Government policy, priorities and strategies echo the advice and recommendations of entities such as the World Bank, IMF and locally, the Bank of Botswana and the Botswana Institute of Development Policy Analysis.

The post-diamond future for the country, the sustainable solution to breaking out of the middle-income trap, lies essentially in private-sector led growth anchored by a suite of structural reforms in the economy.

Editor's Comment
The State apparatus must be sanitised

When the State cannot rely on its own machinery to pursue suspected wrongdoing, repairing that machinery must become a national priority.The establishment of a Special Investigations and Asset Recovery Task Force may help government respond to the immediate challenge. However, Botswana cannot afford to leave the Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime (DCEC) and the Directorate of Public Prosecutions (DPP) struggling whilst building...

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