The president of BB Neo Nwako made the remarks at the 17th edition of the NBC, which ended here this week. The conference which was themed 'Invigorating Economic Transformation through the Private Sector', attracted 500 participants from across the country, region, and internationally.
The NBC is the brainchild of BB, the premier organisation representing businesses in the country. For years there have been concerns that NBC is a mere talk shop and resolutions taken at events are never fully implemented. The NBC was set up to provide the private sector, government, and other stakeholders with a platform to have dynamic engagements on how the country can improve its economy and doing business environment.
Officially opening the NBC, Vice President Slumber Tsogwane also said that the conference should transform from just being a talk shop into a deliberate engagement whose outputs or outcomes can be measured over time.
For his part, Nwako said that going forward, the organisation working collaboratively with various stakeholders will strengthen the monitoring and implementation of the NBC resolutions.
“As the private sector, we want to do things differently. “We are doing this because of notable challenges experienced with failure to implement (resolutions), which has significant implications for doing business; and there are obvious heavy opportunity costs for this failure. “Quantifying it would reflect how many jobs and other opportunities we have failed to create for Batswana,” he said.
He added: “We are going to create a digital platform that is going to enable aggregation of resolutions coming out of this conference, as well as past initiatives such as the HATAB conference and the Local Manufacturing Summit, as long as they are from the private sector, and make them public. “We will ensure that every six months there is an update on the implementation of those resolutions undertaken. “This is to ensure an open and transparent process to ensure accelerated implementation.”
He highlighted that BB has engaged development partners such as the US embassy who are very keen on assisting in the monitoring and evaluation aspect of the implementation of resolutions taken at the NBC.
In his address, Nwako also expressed his frustration about the stringent regulatory system the private sector often encounters. He said that this is contrary to previous promises by the government that regulations or laws impacting negatively on the growth of the private sector would be scrapped.
“These regulatory challenges include over-regulation of business activities, zero compliance to Regulatory Impact Assessment, increased and unrealistic cost of compliance to land leases/concessions and a lack of an efficient framework, especially for the transport sector – wherein there is no Transport Act to regulate the industry. “This has been to the detriment not only of the industry but government revenue opportunities – to name just a few,” he said.
The BB president said that Botswana’s ambitions of transitioning from a middle-income to a high-income country will not become a reality if the regulatory atmosphere is not reassessed to make improvements.
“In today's business, we need smarter regulatory systems, better processes, and well-designed regulations to help minimise business costs and unlock economic growth while improving public health and safety outcomes. “Most of all we emphasise being deliberate about enforcing Regulatory Impact Assessments,” he said.
Nwako also addressed the private sector's shortcomings, noting that delays in project execution by some companies have hindered its growth.
“We also acknowledge that there are challenges emanating from the private sector, for instance, initiatives delivered beyond agreed timelines, budget, and/or with poor quality. “From the private sector, we are committed to reorganising ourselves internally to ensure effectiveness and efficiency as well as the quality of work done at our level,” he said.
