No one who has been diligently following the fiscus for any reasonable amount of time, was taken aback by the screenshot that went viral on social media recently. The snapshot, taken from a recent economic update by Econsult, showed that the Government Investment Account (GIA), which represents government’s savings, had dropped from P19.1 billion in July 2023 to P5.1 billion in April 2024, “a drop of P14 billion in only nine months”.
“Clearly this rate of depletion is unsustainable,” researchers at Econsult, who include former deputy Bank of Botswana governor, Keith Jefferis, said in the update.
