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El-Niño adds P1.3bn blow to budget woes

Friday, August 23, 2024 | 270 Views |

Heavy blow: The country’s delicate fiscal position will be further hurt by the need to finance drought relief measures

The recent El Niño-hit cropping season is set to take a P1.3 billion bite out of the 2024–2025 budget, worsening the precarious fiscal situation, as government scrambles to roll out various drought relief measures.

In June, President Mokgweetsi Masisi declared an “extreme agricultural drought” noting that 16,000 livestock deaths had been recorded countrywide over the summer, while cereal production dropped to just six percent of national demand.

The dry conditions associated with El Niño also caused 1,170 outbreaks of wildfires, affecting 855,861 hectares of land, an area more than 50 times the size of Gaborone city.

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