Botswana�s increasing state ownership in the mining sector

Orapa mine
Orapa mine

I woke up sweating at what the Europeans know as the ‘devil’s hour’ - 3am. The previous evening I had just finished reading a taxation report.

The report was important and as I calmed myself I thought ...how pathetic, only an economist can wake up sweating at 3 am over the results of a mining taxation report. But the report has enormous implications for Botswana and all of Africa. It was completed by the reputable  International Centre for Taxation and Development (ICTD) in 2013 came to really significant conclusions.

Basically it said that only in Botswana in Africa and Chile in South America, which both have significant government ownership of mining  companies (Debswana in Botswana and Codelco in copper rich Chile),  have  governments  ever earned  a significant proportion of the revenues from mining. In those jurisdiction where governments rely solely on taxation systems to extract returns from mineral assets, they have gained precious little.

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