Botswana’s economy is expected to grow 3.1% in 2026, rebounding after two successive years of contraction, Finance Minister Ndaba Gaolathe said in a budget speech on Monday.<\/p>\n
The Southern African country’s economy, long viewed as an African success story, has been\u00a0hit hard by a prolonged downturn in the global diamond market, driven by economic uncertainty and the rising popularity of lab-grown stones.<\/p>\n
Diamonds typically account for about one-third of Botswana’s national revenue and three-quarters of its foreign exchange earnings.<\/p>\n
Gaolathe told lawmakers on Monday that without major economic reforms growth was likely to remain below potential in the short to medium term.<\/p>\n
It was urgent to accelerate economic diversification and strengthen non-mining growth sources, he continued.<\/p>\n
Botswana’s diamond stockpile is\u00a0nearly double\u00a0its target inventory levels amid persistent low prices, limiting its ability to increase production in the short term to support the economy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Botswana’s economy is expected to grow 3.1% in 2026, rebounding after two successive years of contraction, Finance Minister Ndaba Gaolathe said in a budget speech on Monday. The Southern African country’s economy, long viewed as an African success story, has been\u00a0hit hard by a prolonged downturn in the global diamond market, driven by economic uncertainty […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":12559,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":1,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,2362,30],"tags":[212,3460,122],"class_list":["post-19744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-featured","category-southern-africa","tag-botswana","tag-ndaba-gaolathe","tag-south-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19744"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19745,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19744\/revisions\/19745"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}