The country has also scored highly in the Global Competitiveness Report for the period 2003-20043, and Transparency International has recently ranked Botswana 30 out of 133 countries in its Corruption Perception Index.4 All of these scores are the highest among surveyed African countries and are higher than those of several European countries.
Those of you who are familiar with the credit rating procedures are aware that they are based on a wide cross section of the institutional, political, social and policy characteristics of the country being rated and, therefore, the process of assessment is very intrusive. I hasten to add that the central bank played a pivotal role in facilitating the rating exercise.