The Botswana National Productivity Centre (BNPC) today (Sunday) hosts the President of Singapore, Sellapan Ramanathan, who is in Botswana to appraise himself of the progress made by the BNPC, two years after the conclusion of the Botswana-Singapore Technical Cooperation Agreement.
The Botswana-Singapore Technical Assistance project is a government to government agreement that deals with the modalities of setting up a National Productivity Organization (NPO) for Botswana.
The NPO in Botswana was born from the perceived poor work ethics in the country as well as dangers relating to the over-reliance on one commodity. A press statement from the organization said there was, and still is an increasing call and need to diversify the economy.
The government commissioned a study mission to the Asian (economic) Tigers, which include Singapore, Japan, Thailand, Hong Kong and Malaysia, countries renowned for their prowess in productivity.
The mission recommended Singapore as a preferred model because it already had an established NPO. The other reason why Singapore was chosen was because it did not have a lot of natural resources but, rather, depended on its human resource component to elevate itself to a powerhouse economy. This tied it well with the needs for Botswana, particularly with the country’s over-reliance on diamonds to power the economy.
Botswana, said a press release, needs to shift from its over-reliance on diamonds and shift to a more diversified platform that would see citizens playing a major role.
