Botswana

A technical assistance (TA) mission was conducted by IMF’s Regional Technical Assistance Center for Southern Africa (AFS)1 during February 25–March 8, 2019 to assist Statistics Botswana (SB) improve the quality of the national accounts statistics. This was the first mission on national accounts conducted by AFS to SB since January 2015. Reliable national accounts are essential for informed economic policy-making by the authorities. They also provide the private sector, foreign investors, rating agencies, donors and the public in general with important inputs in their decision-making, while informing economic analysis and IMF surveillance. Rebasing the national accounts is recommended every five years. They require comprehensive surveys and ideally, Supply and Use tables (SUTs) to support coherence checking of data.