Weak Diamond Sales Set to Widen Botswana Deficit to 6.7% of GDP
Rough diamonds ahead of sorting at a sales center in Gaborone, Botswana.
Photographer: Waldo Swiegers/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Botswana’s budget deficit for the current financial year will more than double to 18.6 billion pula ($1.4 billion), or 6.7% of gross domestic product, due to a sharp drop in diamond receipts, draft estimates from the Finance Ministry show.
In the February budget, it forecast the deficit for the year ending on March 31 at 8.7 billion pula, or 2.8% of GDP, with a record 102.3 billion pula in spending. Mineral revenues, which traditionally account for a third of the budget, are now expected to drop to 8.7 billion pula from the 25.2 billion pula projected back then.