Botswana’s central bank said Tuesday that the country’s formal employment grew by 1.6 percent from 341,874 new jobs in September 2017 to 347,357 in September 2018.
Presenting the central bank’s annual report for 2018, Bank of Botswana governor Moses Pelaelo said employment in the private sector increased by 0.9 percent, mainly due to job creation in the finance industry where the number of jobs grew by 3.4 percent due to the opening of new bank branches across the country.
According to the report, employment in central government “increased by 3.1 percent as vacancies were filled while for parastatals and local government, respectively, (the increases) were 1.6 and 0.9.”
Citing the most recent domestic employment data published by Statistics Botswana, the central bank said the unemployment rate was higher for women than men. About 19.1 percent of women were unemployed compared to 16.3 percent for men.
Meanwhile the report noted that Botswana’s foreign exchange reserves declined by 3.1 percent from US$7.3 billion in 2017 to US$7.1 billion in 2018.
The decrease reflected, among others, the drawdown of foreign exchange by the government and significant adverse evaluations especially global equity markets towards the end of 2018, the bank said.
KO/jn/APA