Wanetsha Mosinyi
2 April 2008
In its quest to attain national economic diversification, the Botswana Development Corporation's (BDC) investment portfolio on commercial and industrial development grew to P1.32 billion in 2007 from P1.2 billion in 2006.
Some of the latest projects under implementation in the current financial year include expansions of a tile manufacturing entity and a can manufacturing company, both located in Lobatse.
These investments are worth P108 million and P76 million respectively, BDC Managing Director Kenneth Matambo said this on Monday at a dinner the corporation hosted to bid farewell to outgoing President Festus Mogae.
The Corporation is also involved with some foreign investors in a float glass manufacturing business worth P539 million to be located in Palapye.
Raw materials for glass manufacture like silica sand, quartz, quartzite, limestone and soda ash are available in abundance in Botswana. The glass plant in Palapye has targeted limestone sand around Mmamabula while Botash will provide Soda Ash.
Matambo said BDC is also participating in a P150 million project to expand and modernise the operations of the Botswana Vaccine Institute.
Recently the Corporation paid a dividend amounting to P20 million to Government for the financial year ended 2007, after making a profit of P97.0 million compared to P88.0 million in 2006.
Mogae commended BDC for its performance, which saw the Corporation's investment portfolio growing.
"This is indeed commendable," the outgoing President said. "I must, however, express disappointment that BDC and Phakalane Estates still have not developed a five star hotel in Phakalane, and so the African Development Bank can't hold its annual meeting in Botswana on grounds that there is inadequate suitable accommodation."
Delivering his last speech as President, Mogae said BDC had to tackle even more vigorously many challenges associated with economic diversification together with other development agents and stakeholders.
The challenges include an increasingly competitive business environment that demands, at enterprise level, efficiency improvements, costs and quality control, continuous technological innovation and robust market penetration strategies.
For his part, BDC Chairman Serwalo Tumelo said in the light of the strong forces reshaping the global and regional economies, as well as multi-national corporations, new development challenges continued to emerge.Thus it required continual repositioning of development agents like BDC. He said the corporation had a new strategy covering the period 2007 to 2011.
The strategy is meant to tackle identified challenges and to proactively participate in infrastructure development with other stakeholders where feasible.
"The Corporation will continue to appraise and implement projects, including those that may have been identified by the government for development, subject to such projects satisfying the necessary investment criteria."
The BDC was established in 1970 to be the country's main agency for commercial and industrial development. The Government of Botswana owns 100 percent of the issued share capital of the corporation.
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