The low numbers of cattle slaughtered at Botswana Meat Commission (BMC) has forced the authorities to reconfigure the envisaged Lobatse leather park and also relocate it to a new site in Special Economic Zone.
This was confirmed by the Lobatse Deputy Mayor, Phemelo Masisi, when addressing the full council meeting this week.
“Let me reiterate that the delayed implementation of Lobatse Leather Park was necessitated by the need to reconfigure the project’s emerging risks such as the reduced slaughter by BMC. All this resulted in re-scoping of the project, which included validation of raw materials, revision of the business model to further assure viability, and minimum levels of raw materials required to kick start the project”.
Ever since the government approved exports of live cattle to neighbouring countries, the BMC has experienced a slow down in numbers of cattle coming for slaughter.
Sometime last year the government confirmed that close to 201,000 cattle have been exported to South Africa whilst just over 5000 have been exported to Namibia since the exercise commenced in March 2019.
Meanwhile, the milk company, Milk Afric, is also experiencing delays in kicking off its business despite the fact that Botswana Development Corporation has identified a technical partner who wants to expand their business into the country.
Negotiations between the two entities are expected to be concluded next year.
“My office has been informed that Milk Afric has put out a Request for Proposals for project manager services for the construction of the road and development of the bio fence. The objective is to develop infrastructure that is inevitable such that once agreement with the Technical Partner are finalized, the Corporation will then focus on the core structures such as calf and cow housing facilities, cow hospital and feed bam,” he said.
Meanwhile the cattle population is estimated at 2.1 million cows and continues to grow due to good rainfall in the last three years, but BMC is still struggling to pay farmers and attract more of them to sell to it.
The current dispensation to export live cattle has been extended to December 2023.
