Africa-Press – Botswana. There has been a decline in the Government Investment Account (GIA) due to lower mineral receipts which have been affected by lower diamond sales during the year, Minister of Finance, Mr Peggy Serame has said.
Delivering the budget speech yesterday, Minister Serame said the GIA account was P11.40 billion as at November last year from P16.80 billion registered in November 2022.
Similarly, she said the level of the GIA remained low by historical trends and as such continued to limit the extent to which government can cushion the economy from future shocks.
As such, she said government will remain committed to its medium-term objective of rebuilding the financial buffers.
However, she said the 2022/2023 preliminary budget outturn was a deficit of P1.27 million which was almost a balanced budget, which compared favourably to the previous financial year’s deficit of P127.89 million.
“The deficit is also lower than the P4.88 billion deficit that was projected in the revised budget estimates.
This almost balanced budget is due to higher than expected total revenue and grants arising from a high collection in mineral revenue as well as more than expected Bank of Botswana receipts,” she said.
“The underspending of the development budget by P2.15 billion also contributed to the outcome,” she said.
She further indicated that the total revenues and grants amounted to P74.10 billion compared to P71.53 billion in the revised budget.
Also, she said the total expenditure stood 74.10 billion compared to P76.41 billion in the revised budget while recurrent spending amounted to P59.71 billion against the P60.12 billion that was budgeted.
On the other hand, she said development spending amounted to P14.28 billion, compared to P16.43 billion that was initially allocated.
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