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The 2016-2017 Budget Strategy Paper (BSP) released by the finance ministry last week, estimates the economy to grow by 2.6 percent while the budget balance is now seen posting a deficit of P4.03 billion or 2.6 percent of GDP. In February, finance...

According to Bank of Botswana (BoB) figures released this week, the rate of loans uptake by both business and households dropped 45 percent in the first half of the year, from 13.5 percent in December 2014 to 7.4 percent in June 2015. The slower...

The projected budget deficit is further exacerbated by an increase in government expenditure for the year due to public sector salary adjustments as well as cost associated with drought relief measures. A 2016-2017 Budget Strategy Paper (BSP)...

In its financials published yesterday, the country’s oldest bank said profit after tax fell 61 percent to P66.2 million, with the high cost of sourcing deposits effecting a big dent on operating income. Despite the bank’s interest income...

Sluggish sentiment in the market has seen both De Beers and the Okavango Diamond Company (ODC) sales falling by over 20 percent in the first half of the year. Backed by projections of a 10 percent growth in minerals revenues to P19 billion, Finance...

The 15-member bloc has been grappling with power shortage since 2007, with deficit estimated at 8,247MW at the end of June 2015. Addressing the media in Gaborone yesterday during a technical session ahead of next week’s 35th Heads of State...

A CU is where a group of countries that have established a free trade area agree on common external tariffs and a common external trade policy, in a bid to drive increased trade and economic development in the region. Originally scheduled for 2010,...

According to information reaching BusinessWeek, another local cutting and polishing company, Diacore has retrenched 50 employees taking the total number of affected workers in the industry to around 1,000 in the past year. At its peak, the industry...

With credit growth currently at a four-year low due, in part, to tight liquidity in the market, a Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting held yesterday decided to reduce the cost of borrowing to drive spending by both businesses and...

Due to a thin local capital market, regulators currently allow fund managers to invest up to 70 percent of their funds offshore. The Non-Bank Financial Institutions Regulatory Authority (NBFIRA) however, hopes to change the law to 70% domestic and...

African Energy recently sealed a deal for the conditional sale of Mmamantswe  project to an unnamed South African developer for $20 million (P200 million). The Mmamantswe project, which is estimated to host 1.25 billion tonnes of coal, has an...

This has secluded a majority of households from owning residential properties, analysts reckon.  In a quarterly economic report, analysts at consultancy firm, Econsult say although Botswana has a relatively high Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per...

Briefing editors forum in Gaborone yesterday, Matome says in spite of the funding gap, LEA registered and trained 102 Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) in the year upto March 2015 against a target of 41. In the period, 4,995 micro enterprises were...

A Country Diagnostic Report on financial services called Making Access Possible (MAP) approximates that about 18 percent of Botswana’s 1.3 million adult population participate in Metshelo with an average savings of P3,500 per person per...

Results of the Making Access Possible (MAP) report released in Gaborone this week, show that a combination of high cost of land as well as low incomes has excluded the majority of the population from mortgage finance. The MAP study derived the...