Govt. the least stable it has been in four years

Botswana government has been the least stable in four years, the latest Global Competitiveness Report from the World Economic Forum (WEF) says.

The most unstable was in 2010/11 when Botswana Movement for Democracy came into being. WEF monitors the economic and competitive progress of 144 countries across the world through this report. In Botswana the WEF partners with Botswana National Productivity Centre (BNPC) to conduct the survey. BNPC’s spokesperson Stryker Motlaloso explained that “government instability” is the same thing as political instability. “It is political turmoil or political unrest within a country.

In total there are 16 factors considered under the most problematic factors for doing business. Therefore, the respondents were asked to rank the five most problematic factors for doing business. “Government instability/coups” ranked 15 (only 0.5 percent of respondents ranked it in the top five as one of the most problematic factors in Doing Business in Botswana. While in the previous report no respondent (0.0 percent) ranked it in the top five problematic factors - it ranked number 16,” he said.

Over the years, this is how Botswana respondents have scored political stability: 2012/13 - 0.2 percent; 2011/12 - 0.4 percent; 2010/11 - 0.8 percent; 2009/10 - 0.7 percent; 2008/09 - 0.0 percent; and 2006/07 - 0.55 percent. A country’s political stability is of interest to the WEF because economists have found it to either negatively or positively affect economic growth. The IMF has found that political instability “is likely to shorten policy makers’ horizons leading to suboptimal short-term macroeconomic policies. It may also lead to a more frequent switch of policies, creating volatility and thus, negatively affecting macroeconomic performance.”

As measured by “cabinet changes”, political instability is the number of times in a year in which a new national leader is named and/or 50 percent or more of the cabinet posts are occupied by new ministers. Botswana’s political instability was at its highest in the year that some members of the ruling Botswana Democratic Party broke away to form BMD, according to WEF.