- Ministers gather to unpack budget speech
Leemisa Thuseho
BANKING giants, Nedbank Lesotho, in collaboration with the Revenue Services Lesotho (RSL), hosted a post-budget gala dinner at AVANI Maseru last night to unpack the 2024/25 budget statement.
The glamorous event attracted elites from various corporates and economists as well as members of the judiciary. The gala dinner is normally held after the delivery of the budget speech.
Ministers were afforded a platform to speak on how their ministries were going to use the budgets they had been allocated by Minister of Finance and Development Planning, Retṧelisitsoe Matlanyane, in her budget statement earlier yesterday.
The Minister of Information, Communications, Science, Technology and Innovation, Nthati Moorosi, whose portfolio has been allocated M224 438 901, said her ministry convened a lot of functions to discuss and promote economic growth. That would remain a priority. ICTs were also key drivers of economic growth.
“Information and communications technology (ICT) on its own is overwhelming in terms of cost and capacity. Lesotho is not yet at a point of allocating an adequate budget for ICT,” Ms Moorosi said.
However, she said they were working with some development partners to build signal towers. She said last year alone, they built 28 towers and were planning to complete 21 this year as part of the infrastructure needed to support service delivery.
“Another target is to have a digital television. However, we first have to correct the current situation of the national television. Major issue is that the equipment has worn out,” she said.
Minister of Energy, Professor Nqosa Mahao, said a budget can never be enough, but what was important was strategizing on the effective use of the little allocated.
“Our ministry has set goals and they range from enhancing domestic electricity generation, meeting and reaching out to our communities irrespective of their locations,” Prof Mahao said.
“We also make sure that the production sector is adequately supplied.
“By the end of this fiscal year we should be able to produce 170mw of total domestic power consumption.
“What we aim to do in the current year is to provide not less than 10 000 households with renewable energy.”
He said they were also targeting schools and health centres to ease learning and improve health services.
The Ministry of Energy has been allocated M1 096 262 040.
The Minister of Trade, Industry and Business Development, Mokhethi Shelile, said their focus would be on revamping the textiles industry.
“We all know what has happened in the textiles, we have quite a large number of lost jobs and I dare say unnecessarily,” Mr Shelile said.
“We are embarking on what we call textile reorganisation…there has been the saying that since Covid-19, demand in textiles from the United State of America has declined. However, we have discovered that that is not true because other countries’ export rates have been increasing while ours has been decreasing. So we have to look at what we are doing wrong.”
Mr Shelile added that this year they were going to incubate 200 enterprises for women and youth.
The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Business Development allocation is M491 312 612.
For his part, Nedbank Managing Director, Nkau Matete, said it was important to call the ministers to the gala dinner to unpack the budget.
He said a budget was a major event in any country.
“A budget speech is a major event in any country, it is through it that the business community, the private sector, investors, try to understand the policy direction that the government of the day wants to pursue.
“Even ordinary citizens of the country, including senior citizens, orphans, the disabled and all the disadvantaged people want to get to know how much they would have been allocated; be it their monthly allowances or pensions,” Mr Matete said.
