Jefferis urges govt. to invest in human capital budget

Government has been urged to invest money in human capital rather than on infrastructure projects.

Speaking at the Botswana Accountancy College (BAC) national budget interpretation symposium, E-Consult Managing Director, Keith Jefferis said the government is spending a lot of money on construction projects which are less significant to the economy when compared to developing human skills.

“The government is very good in spending on hardware things like building of roads and infrastructure but software development like human skills and education. We don’t need to spend a lot of money on buying equipment but we need to be committed to improve human skills,” said Jefferis.

He said Batswana are struggling to penetrate the international market because they are not competitive.   Jefferis also explained that there is poor implementation of public projects and policies. “There is poor implementation of policies which can help boost the economy. We are always hearing about the set up of many policies but we have never seen those policies implemented,” he said.

He said spending on high return projects is doubtful because of the lack of cost benefit analysis. “Spending in some cases does not seem to be carefully prioritised to ensure prudent spending of scarce resources, a typical example is the 50 percent increase in the defence spending when everything is squeezed,” said Jefferis.

BAC Executive Director, SertyLeburu said research has revealed that the industry believes that graduates possess skills which are a mismatch to the needs of the labour market.

She said they are continuing to take deliberate steps to engage with the industry more meaningfully and systematically to ensure that their output matches current and future industry needs.

“As a business school, we have made giant strides in ensuring that our academic programmes are tailored to anticipate and address the needs of the industry. Our curriculum incorporates to the highest possible extent, industry expectations and requirements,” said Leburu.

Presenting the 2016/17 national budget, Minister of finance and development planning, Kenneth Matambo said government is committed to ensure that issues of quality of education and skills mismatch are addressed through the implementation of the education and training sector strategic plan.

The ministry of education and skills development has been awarded the largest share of P10.64 billion in the recurrent budget.