Africa-Press – Botswana. Government has achieved significant milestones which positively touched the lives of Batswana despite the challenges and setbacks in the past four years.
This was said by Minister of Finance, Ms Peggy Serame in the budget speech she delivered in Parliament yesterday.
Minister Serame said such were achieved through increases in total expenditure by 13.3 per cent from P65.40 billion in the 2019/2020 financial year to P74.10 billion in the 2022/2023 financial year.
“This deliberate move was made to spur economic growth and sustain livelihoods. Government also reallocated the budget over this period to finance increases in student allowances, provision for re-sponsorship costs as well as costs arising from the COVID-19 pandemic including the industry support facility and wage subsidy,” she said.
She said some of the key highlights of the last four years provided a snapshot into how government impacted the lives of Batswana through reforms, initiatives and social protection programmes.
“In addition, a number of pieces of legislation were reviewed and/or promulgated not only to address emerging challenges but also to take advantage of new opportunities,” she added.
Ms Serame also said 2022/2023 financial year, total revenue collected from non-traditional sources under the revised user fees and service charges was P961.14 million, which represented an increase of P314.56 or 48.6 per cent compared to the pre-COVID-19 level of P646.58 million.
“This demonstrates that the implementation of additional revised fees will boost revenue levels consistent with our revenue maximisation drive,” she said.
Again, she said despite such efforts, some ministries were not expedient enough in implementing the revised fees and services charges.
She thus called on all government agencies to generate an increasing proportion of revenue from domestic sources.
The minister indicated that the socio-economic plans in the last four years were disrupted by two major global events, which included the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war.
“These events have implications on economic development and policy execution even now. Against this background, real GDP growth averaged 2.9 per cent, lower than 7.6 per cent that was projected for the period. Consequently, this lower growth translated into a cumulative deficit of P27.50 billion during this review period. Overall, these developments compounded our unemployment problem and slowed our efforts of reducing income inequalities and abject poverty,” she said.
Furthermore, she said unemployment rate, rose from 22.2 per cent recorded in the fourth quarter of 2019 to 25.9 per cent by the third quarter of 2023.
“In the face of these challenges, we commit to formulating optimistic and responsive budgets,” she added.
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