Author

Mbongeni Mguni
Financial Journalist

Twitter: @MboBW

Email: [email protected]
  • Draft NDP12 due by Oct

    This draft will outline national priorities and projects to be funded from 2025 to 2030. Multi-year NDPs have traditionally provided the policy framework and national priorities guiding annual budget spending since Independence. The current two-year...

  • Lucara enters new deal with HB

    The new deal comes after Lucara terminated a previous 10-year deal with HB last September citing 'a material breach of financial commitments'.A statement this morning from Lucara says the agreement covers stones larger than 10.8 carats.The...

  • Lab groans: Synthetics’ price collapse offers hope for naturals

    Too much of a good thing? Or from the perspective of some natural diamond producers, good riddance to bad rubbish?The latest data coming out of the retail jewellery sector indicates that lab-grown diamonds are facing their moment of truth, a crash in...

  • Diamond cutting, polishing firms seek gov’t help

    By the last count, the country had 48 diamond cutting and polishing firms, most of which are clients of De Beers from whom they are under contract to purchase rough diamonds in 10 sales events each year.However, with diamond prices and demand...

  • Absa, Stanbic partner in historic R680m sustainable funding deal

    The deal unveiled on Monday was at least two works in its arrangement and represents the first sustainable-linked funding developed in the local market. Sustainable funding refers to financing linked to the borrower’s pursuit or attainment of...

  • Personalised plates inch closer

    The draft budget estimates are figures released annually by the Finance Ministry as part of the budget documents post the budget speech. The estimates outline both expenditure and revenue across government for the upcoming financial year and include...

  • Geingob: A friend of Botswana

    Geingob passed away last week and is profoundly mourned beyond his home-soil, no more so than in Botswana, a country he had a particularly close relationship with, stemming back decades to the days of the struggle against apartheid. In 2016, on his...

  • Gov't budgets P890m for HB deal

    While Finance Minister Peggy Serame revealed on Monday that the HB deal was one of three strategic acquisitions government was budgeting for in the 2024–2025 financial year, she did not give specifics of the amounts involved.However, the draft...

  • Masisi shifts gears for G7 face-off

    The process of consulting with the Group of Seven on how to successfully clamp down on Russian diamonds while not harming innocent producers such as Botswana, has been likened to handholding an elephant through a china shop.Diamond sector veteran,...

  • BOCRA denies rejecting Starlink application

    In a statement on Wednesday, BOCRA did not mention Starlink by name, but said it had taken note of a media statement concerning a licence application by a “certain global satellite operator”.The media reports, which broke out last week, claimed...

  • Serame goes big with record P102bn spending plan

    According to Serame’s proposals, the 2024-25 budget should see revenues of P93.6 billion set against expected expenditure of P102.3 billion – the highest spending ever proposed in a single budget in the country’s history. The figures point to a...

  • Temo Letlotlo roars on but uncertainty clouds the fields

    Temo Letlotlo, which focuses on farmers’ output, has been hailed as a transformative intervention for a sector whose contribution to the national economy has hovered below five percent over the decades.ISPAAD, the old agriculture inputs programme,...

  • Trade deficit sinks further

    Statistics Botswana figures estimate that diamond exports in November dropped to P1.3 billion, from a revised P2.4 billion in October, pushing down overall exports from P3.9 billion to about P3 billion. Diamonds accounted for about 60% of exports in...

  • The other headache facing diamonds

    The numbers from the horror year diamonds experienced in 2023 are coming in and as expected, they make for grim reading. De Beers, the diamond giant whose partnership with Botswana produces the world second highest diamonds by value each year, saw...

  • De Beers’ sales perk up

    Preliminary receipts from the latest sales, held in Gaborone, were the highest since the seventh sales cycle last year, after which demand tightened even further, reaching COVID-era lows.Commenting on the latest sales cycle, De Beers’ CEO, Al Cook,...

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