Home

Fair Competition In The Supply Chain Key To Competitiveness

The Honourable Assistant Minister of Trade and Industry (MTI) says Botswana will never be globally competitive unless it produces excellent products and services for both the local and global markets. Officially opening the Fourth National Competition Conference IN Gaborone, Advocate Sadique Kebonang said the starting point for global competitiveness is not just access to markets, but fair competition between the enterprises in the various stages of the supply chain.

He intimated that the theme for the 2015 conference; ‘Competition and the Supply Chain’ was particularly relevant given today’s market realities where a market cannot function and deliver without a fair supply chain from input supplies to consumption. “You will agree with me that there could not have been a more fitting theme to this conference, given our supply challenges in Botswana”, he said.

Given the fact that businesses in the various sectors are integrated from production, supplies, transport, wholesale and retail, Advocate Kebonang said it is important to understand the massive contributions that each sector brings to the supply chain, not just producers and suppliers, but countless value adding businesses along the chain.

He further said MTI came up with the Economic Diversification Drive (EDD), an initiative that is geared towards stimulating local manufacturing industries by ensuring that public institutions spend part of their procurement budget to purchase goods and services produced locally.

The Assistant Minister pledged his ministry’s support to the work of the Competition Commission and the Competition Authority and urged stakeholders to keep the two institutions accountable. “Let me also implore all of us here today to keep the two institutions on their toes and ensure they deliver on their mandate and even according to your expectations,” Advocate Kebonang said.

Delivering the keynote address, the CEO of Bramer Life Insurance, Ms. Regina Sikalesele-Vaka, decried the practice by executive management to relegate the supply chain to lower levels within the organisation who do not command the required levels of power and authority to impose their requirements on suppliers.

She said through this management practice, suppliers consequently benefit from almost guaranteed business and are not put under the necessary pressure for quality services or goods.

Ms. Sikalesele-Vaka said it is this lack of executive management focus on the supply chain by both the private and public sector that is the greatest hindrance to competition because organisations are too comfortable with their suppliers to change the status quo.

“Sustainable businesses are those that have moved beyond the 3D management style to a multi-dimensional approach that focuses on the supply chain to stimulate competition” Sikalesele-Vaka said.