Trade
Botswana is part of the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) with South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland, and Namibia. The World Bank reports that in 2001 (the most recent year for which World Bank data are available), the SACU had a weighted average common external tariff rate of 3.6 percent. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, "There are very few tariff or non-tariff barriers to trade with Botswana, apart from restrictions on licensing for some business operations, which are reserved for companies." Based on the revised trade factor methodology, Botswana's trade policy score is unchanged. The main export of Botswana is diamonds. Jwaneng, in Botswana, is the world's largest and richest diamond mine thus the demand of diamonds from Botswana is fairly high. The mine was discovered when termites looking for water brought grains of diamond to the surface. If the great demand of diamonds were to go into rapid decline, then the economy of Botswana would suffer greatly as they are highly dependent on this export. The diamond mine in Jwaneng provides many jobs for the unemployed in Botswana as people are needed to physically extract the diamonds, and to build the roads needed for their transport, for example. A source of foreign exchange is also introduced to the economy and it offers a potential basis for industrial development, and thus stimulates improvements within Botswana's infrastructure.
Read more about this topic: Economy Of Botswana
Famous quotes containing the word trade:
“Conversation is a traffick; and if you enter into it, without some stock of knowledge, to ballance the account perpetually betwixt you,—the trade drops at once: and this is the reason ... why travellers have so little [good] conversation with natives,—owing to their [the natives’] suspicion ... that there is nothing to be extracted from the conversation ... worth the trouble of their bad language.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“I am cozily ensconced in the balcony of my face
Looking out over the whole darn countryside, a beacon of satisfaction
I am. I’ll not trade places with a king. Here I am then, continuing but ever beginning
My perennial voyage....”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“Experience has shown that the trade of the East is the key to national wealth and influence.”
—Chester A. Arthur (1829–1886)