05 Feb 2018

Minister of Finance and Economic Development Mr Kenneth Matambo has said the overall fiscal balance for the 2016/17 financial year was a surplus of P1.12 billion, attributed to the improved performance of total revenues and grants and slight underperformance of total expenditures.  

Presenting the 2018/19 budget proposals before parliament on Monday, the minister said total revenues and grants increased by P1.47 billion, or 2.63 per cent from P55.93 billion in the revised budget to the actual outturn of P57.40 billion.

He said this was due to improvements in mineral revenue and Bank of Botswana revenue.

The minister said the total expenditure and net lending for 2016/17 amounted to P56.27 billion, 1.3 per cent lower than the revised budget estimate.

He said of the total amount, recurrent expenditure amounted to P41.17 billion compared to P39.66 billion in the revised budget, representing an increase of 3.8 per cent.

Development expenditure underperformed by 6.9 per cent to reach P15.16 billion at the end of the financial year, compared to the P16.28 billion figure in the revised budget.

As for the 2017/18 revised estimates, the minister said total revenues and grants are estimated at P57.19 billion, of which Customs and Excise contributes P17.06 billion, or 29.8 per cent of the total amount.

He said mineral revenue accounts for P16.33 billion, or 28.6 per cent, non-mineral income tax contributes P12.33 billion while Value Added Tax (VAT) accounts for P8.11 billion or 14.2 per cent.

The remaining 5.8 per cent of total revenues will be contributed by other revenues, especially Bank of Botswana revenue.

Minister Matambo said the revised total expenditure and net lending for the 2017/18 financial year stands at P59.61 billion, representing a small increase of P61.92 million from the original budget of P59.4 billion.

He said this was due to supplementary funding of P20.3 million and P41.60 million under the recurrent and development budgets respectively, to improve the capacity of the Ministry of Environment, Natural Resources Conservation and Tourism to address increased cases of human-elephant conflict.

The minister said as a result, the revised budget balance for the financial year 2017/18 was a deficit of P2.42 billion, or 1.3 per cent of GDP.  ENDS