23 Feb 2025

The 2025-26 national budget presented recently by Vice President, Minister of Finance, Mr Ndaba Gaolathe has the effect of building the country’s economy after a period of financial stagnation.

Assistant Minister of Trade and Entrepreneurship, Serowe North MP, Mr Baratiwa Mathoothe said this while making his contribution to the Budget Speech debate in Parliament on Friday.

Mr Mathoothe said the Vice President made a clarion call for all Batswana to contribute ideas and effort towards reconstructing the country’s economy. 

He said the budget acknowledged that the national economy and state of infrastructural development was poor, but the process of rebuilding was beginning.

The remedy cannot be achieved within a single financial year, Mr Mathoothe said, but what was reassuring is that country was now following a new trajectory under a new leadership.

He said curbing corruption and financial wastage as well as improved revenue collection would allow the country to refocus the national fiscus on development. 

He said government was committed to assisting those whose Chema Chema loans had been approved, but receiving new applications had currently ceased as the programme was being reassessed.

Also, Mr Mathoothe said it was unfair that subsequent to damage done by wildlife to livestock or crops, commercial farmers get more compensation than subsistence farmers, an anomaly he said the state would correct.

Furthermore, he called for the construction of the roads connecting Tshimoyapula and Majwanaadipitse with Serowe and for irrigation schemes for farms around the Paje to Mmashoro areas.

For his part, Thamaga/Kumakwane MP, Mr Palelo Motaosane said whenever a new government takes over, there tends to be challenges. 

He said after gaining independence, Botswana was one of the poorest, least developed states, but under the guidance of the nation’s founding president, Sir Seretse Khama, it became the best.

He said the second president, Sir Ketumile Masire faced a persistent drought and hostile white minority governments such as apartheid South Africa in the 1980s, but overcame those through prudent management of national resources and visionary government.

Mr Motaosane said the HIV/AIDS pandemic was a major challenge when the third president, Dr Festus Mogae took over, but he similarly overcame and his successor, Lt General Seretse Khama Ian Khama took over at a time of a world economic meltdown.

The government focused on key projects and managed to introduce a stimulus programme to revive the economy. 

President Dr Mokgweetsi Masisi after being elected in October 2019 had to contend with the COVID-19 pandemic, Mr Motaosane said.

These successive Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) governments he said, managed to overcome and develop the country. 

Now the Umbrella for Democratic Change was also elected at a period when the country’s diamond sales were affected and should focus on finding solutions for revenue generation.

Mr Motaosane said BDP was proud to have led the country for 58 years and having inherited no physical infrastructure from the colonial era, having succeeded in establishing development policies that placed Botswana in a better situation than the rest of the continent. 

He said even the current Vice President spoke of his late father, Mr Baledzi Gaolathe and fellow BDP stalwarts, former Presidents Masire and Mogae as his mentors. ENDS