Botswana for years was hailed as an economic success story, but a collapse in demand for the country’s diamonds has hit revenues hard and raised questions about an ambitious spending scheme.
Botswana produces 22 percent of the world’s diamonds, making it the top producer and accounting for half of government revenue. The country prides itself as a model of a successful African democracy.
However, last year, Botswana halved output and suspended much of its diamond activities as the global economic crisis hit its mines. High-end tourism, Botswana’s other economic mainstay, also took a hit as arrivals fell sharply during the recession.
Highlighting the nation’s difficulties, Standard and Poor’s rating agency last Monday downgraded Botswana’s sovereign credit ratings from A to A-, citing concerns over the country’s spending plans at a time of falling revenues.
“We expect this deterioration of public finances to translate into higher debt accumulation than we previously expected, and the gradual dissipation of the country’s asset buffers,” S&P credit analyst Veronique Paillat-Chayrigues said. “We believe that Botswana needs these buffers more than many similarly-rated peers to offset its economic and fiscal dependence on commodity exports, in particular diamonds, combined with its substantial development needs.”
For two years, the government has presented budget deficits due to limited funds and growing public expenditure, with this year’s deficit the largest yet.
Botswanan Finance Minister Kenneth Mathambo said in this year’s budget that the country will run a 12 billion pula (US$1.7 billion) deficit, representing 12.2 percent of GDP.
The shortfall will be financed by drawing on the government’s cash reserves, accumulated in surplus years, and by borrowing largely on the domestic capital market, he said in the budget.
DEMOGRAPHICS: Robotics is the most promising answer to looming labor woes, the long-term care system and national contingency response, an official said Taiwan is to launch a five-year plan to boost the robotics industry in a bid to address labor shortages stemming from a declining and aging population, the Executive Yuan said yesterday. The government approved the initiative, dubbed the Smart Robotics Industry Promotion Plan, via executive order, senior officials told a post-Cabinet meeting news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s population decline would strain the economy and the nation’s ability to care for vulnerable and elderly people, said Peter Hong (洪樂文), who heads the National Science and Technology Council’s (NSTC) Department of Engineering and Technologies. Projections show that the proportion of Taiwanese 65 or older would
Nvidia Corp yesterday unveiled its new high-speed interconnect technology, NVLink Fusion, with Taiwanese application-specific IC (ASIC) designers Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯) and MediaTek Inc (聯發科) among the first to adopt the technology to help build semi-custom artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure for hyperscalers. Nvidia has opened its technology to outside users, as hyperscalers and cloud service providers are building their own cost-effective AI chips, or accelerators, used in AI servers by leveraging ASIC firms’ designing capabilities to reduce their dependence on Nvidia. Previously, NVLink technology was only available for Nvidia’s own AI platform. “NVLink Fusion opens Nvidia’s AI platform and rich ecosystem for
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it is building nine new advanced wafer manufacturing and packaging factories this year, accelerating its expansion amid strong demand for high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The chipmaker built on average five factories per year from 2021 to last year and three from 2017 to 2020, TSMC vice president of advanced technology and mask engineering T.S. Chang (張宗生) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “We are quickening our pace even faster in 2025. We plan to build nine new factories, including eight wafer fabrication plants and one advanced
‘WORLD’S LOSS’: Taiwan’s exclusion robs the world of the benefits it could get from one of the foremost practitioners of disease prevention and public health, Minister Chiu said Taiwan should be allowed to join the World Health Assembly (WHA) as an irreplaceable contributor to global health and disease prevention efforts, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday. He made the comment at a news conference in Taipei, hours before a Taiwanese delegation was to depart for Geneva, Switzerland, seeking to meet with foreign representatives for a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the WHA, the WHO’s annual decisionmaking meeting, which would be held from Monday next week to May 27. As of yesterday, Taiwan had yet to receive an invitation. Taiwan has much to offer to the international community’s
RSS