Botswana goes into recession

Figures released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) this week show that at constant prices, GDP decreased by 20.3 percent from P6.17 billion in the first quarter of 2008 to P4.91 billion in the first quarter of 2009. Mining and quarrying industry contributed most to the decline with a 68 percent fall.

Most countries officially slid into recession a few months ago. But Botswana technically entered recession this week when the CSO released the first quarter national account data on Monday.