IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook 2025
GABORONE: June 17, 2025: The Institute for Management Development (IMD) has officially released the World Competitiveness Yearbook (WCY) for the year 2025. IMD World Competitiveness Yearbooks are published annually to evaluate how participating countries develop and utilise their capabilities to drive sustainable long-term value.
This year’s report evaluates 69 countries, up from 67 in 2024. The assessment focuses on four core factors that influence national competitiveness: Economic Performance, Government Efficiency, Business Efficiency, and Infrastructure.
In the latest edition of the competitiveness rankings, Botswana ranks 59 out of 69 countries—falling from 55 out of 67 in 2024. Its overall competitiveness score declined to 46.12 in 2025, down from 50.31 the previous year (on a scale where 100 represents the highest possible score). Notably, although three individual factors showed modest score improvements, Botswana’s rankings fell across all competitiveness dimensions. This indicates that while Botswana made some progress, other countries improved at a faster pace—undermining Botswana’s relative position in the global competitiveness landscape. These results also reflect the broader fiscal challenges currently facing the country, including constrained public spending and limited resources to drive competitiveness improving reforms.
In Business Efficiency, Botswana improved its score from 33.39 in 2024 to 39.18 in 2025, despite a slight drop in ranking—from 47th out of 67 countries to 48th out of 69. The labour market sub-factor remains a key strength, with top performances in the rankings of proportion of women in management (2nd), female labour force participation (4th), stock market capitalisation relative to GDP (5th), minimum wage benchmarks (6th), and compensation levels (7th). However, this strength is offset by poor performance in areas like talent attraction and retention (62nd), worker motivation (68th), business agility (60th), and risk response (61st).
Economic Performance remains Botswana’s weakest area and is ranked last among all assessed countries in 2025, declining from 64 out of 67 countries in 2024. Its score also deteriorated, to 12.47 in 2025 down from 25.95 in 2024. The country scores poorly in domestic economy (69th), international trade (69th), and employment (68th). However, when observing the indicators that feed into the sub-factors, weaknesses were identified in the export of goods (69th), export concentration by product (69th), direct investment stock inflows (68th), and unemployment rate (67th). These indicators highlight the urgency of adopting outward-looking policies to foster private sector–led and export-driven growth. Botswana stands out in one key area - it has the world's most favourable cost-of-living index (3rd). In this instance, the cost-of-living index is not a reflection of the country’s inflation rate but rather the price of a basket of goods and services in a country’s main city.
In terms of Infrastructure, the factor ranked 59 out of 69 countries, declining two places from the previous year’s rankings. On the contrary, its score improved to 28.27 in 2025 up from 26.22 in 2024. Notably, the health & environment sub-factor improved by two places in the ranking to 56 out of 69 in 2025 from 58 out of 67 in 2024. The sub-factor’s strength is in renewable energies (16th). The country faces significant shortcomings in technological readiness, most notably with internet bandwidth speed ranking (67th).Further shortcomings are indicators in education and health, where pupil-teacher ratio at primary school level (61st), life expectancy at birth (64th), medical assistance (64th) and universal health coverage index (63rd) are among the lowest in rankings.
Government Efficiency also declined, falling from a ranking of 38 out of 67 countries in 2024 to 41 out of 69 countries in 2025. This is despite an improvement in the factor’s score of 48.68 from 47.38 during the period. While Botswana excels in offering low employer and employee social security tax rates (both ranked 1st) and maintains a favourable ratio of government subsidies to GDP (2nd), governance related challenges persist. These include prolonged budget deficits (68th), inefficiencies in business registration processes such as start-up days (67th) and start-up procedures (58th), high income inequality (63rd) and life expectancy equality (62nd), and limited progress on sustainable development goals (61st).
In this year’s WCY six African countries participated with Kenya and Namibia participating for the first time. Regionally, Botswana is ranked second after Kenya (56th). Other included African countries are Ghana (61st), South Africa (64th), Nigeria (67th), and Namibia (68th). Internationally, Switzerland reclaimed the top position, followed by Singapore and Hong Kong SAR, highlighting shifts in the competitive dynamics at the top.
For more information please contact: Mr Letsogile Batsetswe or Ms Sethunya Kegakgametse at +267 3 626 300 or email at letsogileb@bnpc.bw or sethunyak@bnpc.bw. The full report can be accessed at https://www.imd.org.
