Ratings agency Moody’s on Friday downgraded Botswana’s domestic- and foreign-currency long-term issuer ratings to “Baa2” from “Baa1”, citing an expected deterioration in the country’s public finances.<\/p>\n
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The move marks \u200cBotswana’s second downgrade by Moody’s in less than a year, leaving the sovereign just two notches above junk status.<\/p>\n
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It also comes days after Finance Minister Ndaba Gaolathe said Botswana expects a much smaller budget deficit in the current fiscal year, \u2060helped by higher-than-expected revenue from the central bank and measures to rein in spending.<\/p>\n
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Botswana’s economy, long viewed as an African success story, has been hit hard by a prolonged downturn in the global diamond market, driven by economic uncertainty and the growing popularity of lab-grown diamonds. Diamonds typically account for about one-third of Botswana’s national revenue and three-quarters of its foreign exchange earnings.<\/p>\n
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Moody’s \u200csaid \u2060weaker diamond-sector revenue, lower-than-expected receipts from the Southern African Customs Union a key source of government income, and disappointing proceeds from newly introduced tax measures had weakened Botswana’s fiscal position.<\/p>\n
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The rating agency also warned \u2060that it could cut again if Botswana were to materially increase its investment in De Beers through debt-financed transactions, a sale Anglo American \u2060is aiming to close in the final quarter of this year.<\/p>\n
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The outlook was changed to stable from negative, citing a \u2060stronger fiscal policy response and that a more sustained recovery in diamond revenue could slow the pace of debt accumulation.<\/p>\n
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–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":41527,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[44],"class_list":["post-46518","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-finance","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Moody's downgraded Botswana's domestic- and foreign-currency long-term issuer ratings","published_date":"2026-09-26 08:13:34","news_description":"Moody's downgraded Botswana's domestic- and foreign-currency long-term issuer ratings","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/46518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/46518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46519,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/46518\/revisions\/46519"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=46518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}