Economic Statistics

 
Average Annual Inflation Rates (2013-2022)

Source: Botswana Economic Financial Statistics (2022)

Botswana experienced a decline in the annual inflation rates over the years with the lowest rate of 1.9% in 2020 before a sharp increase as depicted by the trends in the figure above. The general price decrease can be attributed to low consumer demand and spending during global lockdown. The inflation rate breached the Bank of Botswana`s upper bound of the medium term objective range (3-6%) in Quarter 2 of 2021. Factors that led to inflation being skewed to the upside were increase in commodity prices, logistical constraints due to lags in production, as well as aggressive actions by the government to cushion aggregate demand.The Bank of Botswana’s monetary policy stance to achieve medium term price stability has been the use of monetary policy rate, currently at 2.65%.

The 2019 Global Competitiveness Report (GCR) indicates that Botswana ranks 91st out of 141 countries with a score of 55.5 (in a scale of 0-100), which is quite below the competitiveness frontier. The indicator measures national competitivenes defined as the set of institutions, polices and factors that determine the level of productivity (Global Competitiveness Report, 2019)

Monetary Policy Rate at 2.65% - Monetary Policy Committee Decision April 2023 (Bank of Botswana website)

Botswana foreign reserves stood at 56,037 (millions) Pula February 2023. Botswana Foreign Exchange Reserves equaled 7.8 months of import in February 2023, compared with the ratio of 10.0 in the previous month. The country reached an all-time high of 50.2 in Apr 2020 and a record low of 4.4 in September 2022.  – (Botswana Economic financial statistics 2023)

 

Real GDP Trends

Source: Statistics Botswana Reports, 2020

Real GDP increased by 2.7 percent in first quarter of 2020 compared to 4.3 percent increase in the same quarter of 2019. There was a sharp decline in quarter 2 of 2020 reaching lows of -24%, and -6% in quarter 3. The negative growth are attributable to the  measures put in place to combat COVID-19 the  pandemic, which negatively affected the performance of many sectors of the economy.