27 Jan 2026

The 2026/2027 national budget, set to be presented before Parliament on February 9, will kickstart the process of transforming the country’s economy, guided by the Botswana Economic Transformation Programme (BETP) and the National Development Plan (NDP 12).

This was revealed by Vice President and Minister of Finance, Mr Ndaba Gaolathe in his address during the Budget Pitso for general stakeholders’ consultation in Gaborone on Monday.

Mr Gaolathe emphasised that the BETP was vital for restructuring the country’s economy into a more resilient system, where practical delivery and priorities translated into investment and employment.

“BETP recognises that Botswana’s constraint is not the absence of ideas. It is execution, productivity and a growth structure that must now broaden beyond what the public purse and diamonds can sustainably support. BETP exists to ensure economic diversification is implemented in practice, sector by sector, project by project,” he added.

He revealed that the economic model, which had sustained the country since independence, anchored on diamond revenue and government spending, had become unsuitable and made transformation imperative.

“In plain terms, we are operating in a new reality. We must stabilise the economy and protect the vulnerable, while simultaneously repositioning the economy for diversification and jobs without assuming that public spending alone can carry that transition,” he said.

The Vice President called on the private sector to reduce its reliance on government procurement and instead become enterprising and innovative in developing sustainable business solutions.

“If we are serious about diversification, then we must be serious about a culture shift. Botswana cannot build a resilient high-income economy if too much private initiative is based around government contracts. No nation has diversified by treating public procurement as the main investment model,” he said.

He added that Botswana needed to build an economy where entrepreneurs established factories that served households, firms competed effectively, value chains deepened and imports were substituted by domestic production and exports that generated foreign exchange.

The Vice President also called on private financial institutions to join the state in the cultural shift through “financing that rewards productivity and funding models that back real value creation rather than short-term cycles.”

He pledged that government would remain transparent about the current state of the economy while working toward long-term solutions.

That, he said, included fostering a new culture where projects were completed on time and within budget and where opportunity was created through production and enterprise.

For his part, secretary of Macroeconomic and Financial Policy at the Ministry of Finance, Dr Sayed Timuno, reiterated that the 2026/2027 budget served as a launchpad for NDP 12.

Dr Timuno noted that according to World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) projections, global growth would remain subdued through 2026, which continued to adversely affect the domestic economy.

He added that while the mining sector remained the main driver of growth, diamond prospects for 2026 remained abstract as lab-grown diamonds continued to pressure the natural diamond market.

Senior policy advisor in the finance ministry, Ms Naledi Madala stated that the BETP would focus on bringing to life projects that had undergone rigorous labs in sectors such as agriculture, manufacturing, energy and tourism. BOPA