- Tsaone Segaetsho
Vice President and Finance Minister, Ndaba Gaolatlhe, has outlined the government’s plan to establish commercial courts specifically to handle corporate cases in a jurisdiction that appears to underprioritise corporate and company law.
Speaking while delivering his Budget Speech for the 2025/2026 financial year this week, Gaolatlhe stated that the government had completed a feasibility study on the establishment of a commercial dispute resolution framework.
“Botswana currently has no court specially dedicated to resolving commercial disputes, and it takes an average of 660 days to resolve a commercial case. We will establish commercial courts to reduce turnaround time to resolve commercial cases in the 2025/2026 financial year. Feasibility studies are in place to inform the Administration’s review of the Arbitration Act of 1959 during the 2025/2026 financial year to address the challenges identified.”
Meanwhile, on another matter, Gaolatlhe reaffirmed the government’s commitment to advancing an export-led growth model. He revealed that a development budget of P930 million would be proposed to support this agenda, with a key focus of this initiative being to unlock global value chain opportunities for export markets.
“We will support Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) by addressing existing bottlenecks, such as lack of access to finance and markets. To this end, Government will continue to promote entrepreneurial development through implementation of free trade agreements such as the Southern Africa Development Community-Economic Partnership Agreement (SADC-EPA) and African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). Mr Speaker, these agreements will increase local producers’ access to larger export global markets, thus increasing the current level of exports and also contributing to diversifying the country’s export base,” said Gaolatlhe.
