Innovations demands agility. Too much regulation gives power not to innovators, entrepreneurs and business people but to bureaucrats. Last week the president said the collapse of internet in government offices should be the thing of the past.
He knows he does not mean it.
The collapse of internet inside government offices is much deeper to be rid by a pontification, even if its from a president.
No effort must be spared in reducing red tape. There are too many regulations that kill small businesses. To connect water for irrigation, for example is a big job for a small farmer who needs to fill paper loads of complex forms at the Department of Water Affairs. These forms are not meant to achieve much save to control, stifle and take away the life from those trying to produce.
Such red tape simply sucks the life out of innovation. Red tape kills competitiveness and increases the cost of doing business. Most importantly red tape increases the length of turn around time for key decisions and key milestones along the value chain of doing business.
For people in business or trying to enter business, red tape and related regulatory burdens are heavy. In fact these burdens are the reasons for corruption, bribery and other underhand tactics including influence buying and peddling as people try to circumvent them to go into business.
To make matters worse, officials have too much power and discretionary leeway to keep moving the goal posts. Customers and clients are at the mercy of officials that have themselves never attempted to run a business in their lives.
They see nothing wrong making it difficult to overcome regulatory burdens. Botswana government could maker an undertaking that for every new regulation made today two or more already existing regulations should be pulled down.
That way there is a guarantee that as a country we would be on our way to collapsing the wall of bureaucratic red tape. Keeping up with red tapes increases the cost of running a business.
They also make compliance unreasonable difficult to achieve.
