The late Kenneth Koma had made it his life-long ambition and vocation to fight for the opening up of the way the Government budget was formulated.
As a Member of Parliament, year in, year out, Koma would pre-phase his budget debate by pointing out that the speech was an outcome of a secretive and therefore inherently undemocratic process.
Koma said even though the budget purported to uplift the lives of Batswana it failed the basic test of soliciting the input and opinions of those it was meant to serve.
During Koma’s time as both leader of opposition and BNF President it was commonplace to hear statements to the effect that the budget speech was actually drafted from some university campus in Canada ÔÇô a statement, outrageous as it might have been, the Government never really quite convincingly denied.
This week two major events happened with specific emphasis on budget improvements.
The economic and policy think tank, Botswana Institute for Development Policy Analysis (BIDPA), held a meeting at which the analysts urged government to open up its budget formulation as a way of enhancing the public ownership of the budget speech.
Two days later, the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning held what they called a Budget Pitso, which basically entailed soliciting input from stakeholders ahead of a budget speech due to be delivered by the Minister of Finance in February early next year.
It is sad that Kenneth Koma died before he could see the course for which he passionately fought materialize into reality.
But his followers ÔÇô and there are still many – can draw solace from the knowledge that Dr. Koma’s fight for pluralism, consultation in the manner the national budget was prepared has not been in vain.
Efforts by this Government to open up the budget formulation to the public, is in our opinion, one of the most commendable milestones.
This newspaper has for many years called on Government to be more transparent in its formulation of the budget.
We also are gratified to see that at long last Government has come to see the wisdom of opening up.
As it is Government has nothing to lose. In fact, it is in Government interest to open up.
The case for opening up has never been greater given the fact that Botswana’s economy has never been weaker. It is in Government’s interest to take the people along so that public expectations are crafted to be in step with what resources are available.
What is left now is to see the extent to which Government will, in the final analysis, take on board the inputs and suggestions made by those outside Government high rankings.
It has never really made much sense to us why Government found it necessary to shroud the process of budget formulation with secrecy.
Ultimately, it is Government responsibility to fine tune and refine the speech based not on the overarching policy, but also on the full knowledge of what resources are available to the state to see through the projects as well as to dictate the tone and direction the budget wishes to take.
Another area where Government, especially the Ministry of Finance, has to make reforms is in the manner with which our foreign reserves are managed.
While we respect the independence of Bank of Botswana, we want to emphasise the fact that the money that BoB is managing does not belong to the executives at the Central Bank.
We want to believe the money belongs to the nation and therefore a need to go an extra mile on disclosure.
It is still not clear why information on foreign reserves, where they are invested, with whom and by whom cannot be published much more frequently in a platform that is readily available and used by the broadest spectrum of our population!
