Botswana: Selected Issues
IMF Staff Country Reports, September 10, 2024
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Bibliographic details
- Published: September 10, 2024
- Series: IMF Staff Country Reports
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.5089/9798400288258.002
Rationale and design of a Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF)
- Discusses the rationale for and design of a new Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) in Botswana.
- Identifies many reasons a government may want to generate savings and manage them in a SWF.
- Concludes that a SWF could provide a useful institutional framework to support rebuilding buffers.
Fiscal context and reserves
- Reviews the causes of declining financial reserves.
- Notes that while debt ratios have been steady, the government has financed deficits by drawing down its assets.
- Emphasizes that achieving significant savings to meaningfully fund an SWF would require much tighter fiscal policy than has been observed in recent years.
Intergenerational equity and investment choices
- Argues intergenerational equity may be better served by creating financial assets, rather than through investment spending, although the two are not mutually exclusive.
- Observes that Botswana has tended to allocate resource revenues primarily to physical and human investment.
Fiscal targets and policy implications
- Calculates fiscal targets that would be needed to achieve insurance and intergenerational equity objectives.
- Stresses the importance of first considering the level of savings the government requires to achieve its policy objectives before discussing SWF design.
Content in this bundle
- Botswana: Selected Issues; IMF Country Report No. 24/287; July 25, 2024