A bird’s eye view of the 2023 Budget Speech

Despite anticipated deceleration of global economic growth in 2022 and 2023 by 3.4% and 2.9%, respectively, Botswana strongly rebounded from the adverse effects of the pandemic posting growth of 11.8% in 2021 with growth projected to 6.7% and 4% in 2022 and 2023, correspondingly.

While inflation was significantly above the Bank of Botswana’s target of 3-6% in 2022, mitigating measures such as interest hikes, temporary reduction in VAT rate and zero rating of some food commodities helped to arrest the acceleration of inflation, leaving it at 12.4% in December.