Productivity should become the new catchword

As was expected, the State of the Nation Address by President Ian Khama has to a very large extent been an economic treatise.
In all fairness, the President’s speech did justice in its attempt to paint a true picture of economic realities current prevailing.
He said there are challenges; and that was enough for everybody knows what those challenges are.
We could not have expected the President to go far in detailing just what his government will be doing, since many of the instruments at government disposal have now been exhausted.
“Economic expansion has been accompanied by a net expansion in job numbers; albeit not enough to absorb all those seeking employment.”
The President was using a boilerplate statement to state the obvious.
To the more cynical he may even have been playing down the stubborn unemployment levels, which from  their heights can no way be dented by the kind of economic recovery and growth we have been registering.
For unemployment to go down, economic growth needs to be much higher, much stronger, more sustained, and much more robust than it has been.
But in his own words, the President has acknowledged that while non-mining sectors are responsible for what growth we have seen thus far, the real drivers that matter have themselves let us down.
These primarily include mining and to a lesser extent agriculture.
The president has said in his speech that efforts are ongoing to turn Botswana into a global centre for such areas like mineral beneficiation, finance, tourism, and innovation.
All those are welcome.
But we should be worried at the little amount that has been so far been achieved since this was made a public policy half a decade ago.
At the centre of little progress is the decadent public service which occupies such a central position in Botswana’s political economy.
It would seem like there is no leader leadership, no imagination and no innovation in our public service.
 Unless efforts are expended to reform the civil service, which we dare say cannot happen under the current leadership, then we may as well forget about all the good reform initiatives that the President is so emphatically and boldly pronouncing as our future.
“Given that our public sector is also the country’s largest employer and provider of services it is clear that its performance is crucial for our economic and social wellbeing>”
This in our view is the single most important sentence in the whole of the President’s speech.
Unless there is movement within the public sector, there cannot be any movement in any of the either sectors of the country’s political economy.
And the public sector has been on a standstill or at best on a go slow for the better part of the last half decade.
It is gratifying that the President says measures are being put in place to turn the situation around.
By our, there was never a need for the consultancy that they the President has alluded to.
The weakest link is there sitting beside the President.
The Permanent Secretary to the President, who happens to be the head of the civil service has run out of ideas. And no amount of consultancies is going to give him new ideas.
Implementing the findings, while keeping the Head of the Civil service will; not get any new results.
What the civil servants need today is a head that will give them a reason to be productive.
Productivity by the way should become the new chorus for the future.
Supposing the economy recovered to pre-recession levels, which economists are united in their prediction that it will take decades, not even diamonds, will going forward ever be able to regain their influence and strength to be a sole driver of the economy in the manner they used to unless complimented by a productive workforce that has a work ethic totally different from the current one.
We call on the president to bite the bullet and put in place measures that will kick-start a movement towards productivity.
That can only happen if changes are introduced at the upper-most echelons of the civil service.