Botswana Investment & Trade centre Webinar

The European Union Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Southern Africa is a member-driven, non-profit, fee-based organisation representing European business in Southern Africa. The EU has historically been South Africa's main trading partner and the biggest source of foreign direct investment (FDI). Firms from EU Member States represent over 40% of SA's total FDI stocks of R800bn (post-Brexit). The EU Chamber is the voice of European investors in Southern Africa, that is, over 2,000 generic enterprises with over 350,000 employees.

The BITC RSA office after consultative engagements with the EU Chamber of Commerce has both consensually agreed to collaborate and organize a Webinar on Doing Business with Botswana which will be held on the 3rd March 2021 targeting EU companies in RSA drawn from the following sectors: Agriculture, ICT, Mining, Health, Manufacturing (Including Automotive component manufacturing), and Financial Services.

The objective of the Webinar will be to:

• Increase the level of awareness regarding the Botswana Investment offering amongst EU companies' resident in RSA, in the region as well as in Europe. Attract EU companies with pan African expansion plans to consider Botswana as an investment destination of choice.
• Market the IFSC fiscal framework to EU companies already resident in RSA to urge them to consider having their holding structures domiciled in Botswana for efficiency purposes.

Botswana as an investment location offers the following investment climate which is not limited to the following:

• Corporate tax will be 15 % for manufacturing, financial services and innovation led services whilst it is 22 % for other businesses such as Dairy farming
• There are no exchange controls so profits /dividends can be repatriated with no authorisation required
• There are no limitations on foreign ownership
• And there is duty free importation of machinery to be used in production
• Literacy rate of 87 % implying it is easy to upskill your unskilled workforce
• Zero tolerance for corruption
• As well as myriad trade agreements to export to at preferential rates e.g. : Botswana Zimbabwe Free Trade Agreement, SACU, SADC, AGOA, SACU-EU, ACFTA etc. for producers domiciled in Botswana.