Botswana for years was hailed as an economic success story, but a collapse in demand for the country’s diamonds has hit revenues hard and raised questions about an ambitious spending scheme.
Botswana produces 22 percent of the world’s diamonds, making it the top producer and accounting for half of government revenue. The country prides itself as a model of a successful African democracy.
However, last year, Botswana halved output and suspended much of its diamond activities as the global economic crisis hit its mines. High-end tourism, Botswana’s other economic mainstay, also took a hit as arrivals fell sharply during the recession.
Highlighting the nation’s difficulties, Standard and Poor’s rating agency last Monday downgraded Botswana’s sovereign credit ratings from A to A-, citing concerns over the country’s spending plans at a time of falling revenues.
“We expect this deterioration of public finances to translate into higher debt accumulation than we previously expected, and the gradual dissipation of the country’s asset buffers,” S&P credit analyst Veronique Paillat-Chayrigues said. “We believe that Botswana needs these buffers more than many similarly-rated peers to offset its economic and fiscal dependence on commodity exports, in particular diamonds, combined with its substantial development needs.”
For two years, the government has presented budget deficits due to limited funds and growing public expenditure, with this year’s deficit the largest yet.
Botswanan Finance Minister Kenneth Mathambo said in this year’s budget that the country will run a 12 billion pula (US$1.7 billion) deficit, representing 12.2 percent of GDP.
The shortfall will be financed by drawing on the government’s cash reserves, accumulated in surplus years, and by borrowing largely on the domestic capital market, he said in the budget.
ACCOUNTABILITY: The incident, which occured at a Shin Kong Mitsukoshi Department Store in Taichung, was allegedly caused by a gas explosion on the 12th floor Shin Kong Group (新光集團) president Richard Wu (吳昕陽) yesterday said the company would take responsibility for an apparent gas explosion that resulted in four deaths and 26 injuries at Shin Kong Mitsukoshi Zhonggang Store in Taichung yesterday. The Taichung Fire Bureau at 11:33am yesterday received a report saying that people were injured after an explosion at the department store on Section 3 of Taiwan Boulevard in Taichung’s Situn District (西屯). It sent 56 ambulances and 136 paramedics to the site, with the people injured sent to Cheng Ching Hospital’s Chung Kang Branch, Wuri Lin Shin Hospital, Taichung Veterans General Hospital or Chung
‘TAIWAN-FRIENDLY’: The last time the Web site fact sheet removed the lines on the US not supporting Taiwanese independence was during the Biden administration in 2022 The US Department of State has removed a statement on its Web site that it does not support Taiwanese independence, among changes that the Taiwanese government praised yesterday as supporting Taiwan. The Taiwan-US relations fact sheet, produced by the department’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, previously stated that the US opposes “any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side; we do not support Taiwan independence; and we expect cross-strait differences to be resolved by peaceful means.” In the updated version published on Thursday, the line stating that the US does not support Taiwanese independence had been removed. The updated
‘CORRECT IDENTIFICATION’: Beginning in May, Taiwanese married to Japanese can register their home country as Taiwan in their spouse’s family record, ‘Nikkei Asia’ said The government yesterday thanked Japan for revising rules that would allow Taiwanese nationals married to Japanese citizens to list their home country as “Taiwan” in the official family record database. At present, Taiwanese have to select “China.” Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said the new rule, set to be implemented in May, would now “correctly” identify Taiwanese in Japan and help protect their rights, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. The statement was released after Nikkei Asia reported the new policy earlier yesterday. The name and nationality of a non-Japanese person marrying a Japanese national is added to the
There is no need for one country to control the semiconductor industry, which is complex and needs a division of labor, Taiwan’s top technology official said yesterday after US President Donald Trump criticized the nation’s chip dominance. Trump repeated claims on Thursday that Taiwan had taken the industry and he wanted it back in the US, saying he aimed to restore US chip manufacturing. National Science and Technology Council Minister Wu Cheng-wen (吳誠文) did not name Trump in a Facebook post, but referred to President William Lai’s (賴清德) comments on Friday that Taiwan would be a reliable partner in the
RSS