Botswana: Financial System Stability Assessment

This paper discusses financial system stability assessment in Botswana. Botswana’s financial sector, which exhibits high integration between banks and non-bank financial institutions, withstood the pandemic well. The economic recovery continues to be strong, but inflation remains high with risks tilted to the upside. The financial sector appears broadly stable, sound, and resilient. Main risks relate to banks’ high concentration of lumpy short-term deposits from retirement funds and insurance companies, volatility in diamond prices, geo-political developments, and the tightening of global financial conditions. The challenging risk environment underscores the need to address the existing gaps in the financial stability framework and the supervisory regime that could impede Bank of Botswana’s operational independence in supervisory matters. The banking supervision approach should be more risk-based and forward-looking, with more skilled staff who can identify emerging risks in the more complex banking sector. Specific regulations for material risks should be issued and Pillar 2 supervisory assessments developed for more risk-sensitive capital requirements. Data gaps should be addressed to enable the implementation of stress tests on a globally consolidated basis, perform more granular analyses of household and corporate sector vulnerabilities, and activate macroprudential tools.