Botswana Oil to fork P80m dividend to gov’t

Lewanika Timothy | Monday June 8, 2026 06:00

Since legislative changes that saw the parastatal being awarded a 90% import monopoly of petroleum products into the country, its financial performance has been on the upswing, with management expecting to declare growing dividends for the third year.

Appearing before the Parliamentary Committee on Statutory Bodies and State Enterprises last week, BOL acting CEO, Latelang Chakalisa, revealed that the organisation was experiencing year-on-year growth in its financial metrics.

“For the financial year 2022–2023, BOL recorded a profit before tax of P99 million, and for the financial year 2023–2024, BOL recorded a PBT of P69 million. “Profitability increased significantly in 2024–2025 with pretax profit at P282 million and profit after tax of P246 million. “For the financial year ending March 2026, PBT was P490 million and after-tax profit at P388 million, though it’s still subject to audit validation. “This is toasting to shareholder value in dividend payments. “We are projecting a dividend payout of P80 million,” she said.

The company's positive financial performance has been buoyed by its 90% mandate, which has experienced pushback by industry players who claim the mandate is anti-competitive and was leading to low price recovery in the market.

Industry players, particularly the multinational oil companies, have decried the 90% import mandate, saying it introduces pricing and security of supply risk into the market, whilst undercutting the business investment case built by these companies over the decades.

Calls for the revision of the import mandate have grown even sharper in the wake of the Middle East conflict, with analysts pointing out that having one player exclusively enjoy a 90% monopoly was a risk.

The Ministry of Minerals and Energy recently confirmed that a review of the import mandate was underway, amidst calls for drastic cuts from the multinational oil companies, who have been most affected by the quota.

Recently, the industry regulator said that the import mandate was to be reviewed, with the likely decision being a reduction of the import mandate.

BERA CEO, Never Tshabang, said momentum was gathering on the review.

“When I came in, my mandate was to review the BERA Act so that we see whether this mandate is still relevant, feasible, or needs to be changed,” he said.

“We studied and submitted to the ministry, and the Cabinet accepted that the mandate should be changed, but it has to go through Parliament. “I'm not going to speak about the numbers now, but it is going to come down to some point, in order to accommodate more players in the industry, because as it is, 90% is more or less monopolistic in nature.”