Botswana’s finance minister has announced plans to make withdrawal from the country’s development budget to fund coronavirus fighting efforts.
Peggy Serame, Minister of Finance and Economic Development on Tuesday said the government seeks to delay the implementation of some projects to accommodate the urgent needs to fight the pandemic.
“The withdrawal is made against the approved Domestic Development Fund (DDF) amount of approximately 1.26 billion U.S. dollars across programmes and projects in order to provide room within both Consolidated and Development Funds to accommodate the funding requests for Ministries of: Finance and Economic Development, Health and Wellness, Defence, Justice and Security and Tertiary Education, Research, Science and Technology,” said Serame.
She emphasized that projects earmarked for delayed implementation are those which have not yet started and new contracts have not been signed, while ongoing projects will be allowed to continue for now to avoid disruption.
The minister said the budget withdrawal has been triggered by tight budgetary situations and the uncertainty around the recovery of the economy, to accommodate part of the urgent supplementary requests. Enditem
