SA counts the costs of veggie import bans
Saturday, May 11, 2024 | 1200 Views |
High demand: The vegetable import ban has been extended to December 2025
South African agricultural economists estimate that the value of the country’s vegetable exports to Botswana dropped by 55% in 2022, the first year of the partial horticultural import ban imposed by Gaborone to boost local production.
The figures released recently are the first indication of the impact of the import ban effected in January 2022 by government.
When the State cannot rely on its own machinery to pursue suspected wrongdoing, repairing that machinery must become a national priority.The establishment of a Special Investigations and Asset Recovery Task Force may help government respond to the immediate challenge. However, Botswana cannot afford to leave the Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime (DCEC) and the Directorate of Public Prosecutions (DPP) struggling whilst building...