Railway transport rakes in P58 million in Q1

Statistics Botswana’s (SB) just released Q1 2020 transport and infrastructure statistics shows that revenue of P58.8 million was posted depicting decrease of 1.9 percent compared to previous Q4 2019. 

The data, drawn up by Statistics Botswana, shows that compared to the same quarter of the previous year, revenue collected went down by 6.5 percent as Q1 faced Covid-19 devastation.

Revenue generated during the month of January constituted whopping 28.5% to total revenue, with February and March accounting for 30.9 percent and 40.6 percent of income respectively. Compared to the same months of the previous year, revenue collected in January and February decreased by 29.1 and 8.0 percent respectively and revenue collected in March grew by 22.5 percent.

Statistician General Dr Burton Mguni said goods transported in Q1 through the railway grew up by 15 percent when equated to 2019 while rail passengers declined by 58.4 percent in Q1 2020 compared to 2019.

Botswana Total (an addition of total imports and goods originated from Botswana) contributed 81.1 percent to the total revenue whilst the transit traffic accounted for 18.2 percent of the total revenue.

“The Botswana Origin is comprised of Total Exports and Local Traffic goods while those goods referred to as Botswana Total is an addition of Total Import and Botswana Origin goods. Total Traffic is made up of total Imports, Local Traffic and Transit Traffic,” Statistics Botswana said.

Local traffic is goods transported within Botswana and Transit Traffic is goods transported over Botswana to other states. A total of 295,271 net tonnes of goods was transited using rail in Q1 2020; an increase of 15.9 percent compared to the previous quarter. The goods transported by rail decreased by 3.7 percent when compared to the same quarter last year.  

Total Imports increased by 12.5 percent while the total exports decreased by 6.0 percent when compared to the previous quarter when local traffic went down by 6.6 percent.

“Local traffic went down by 6.6 percent while goods that originated from Botswana declined by 6.1 percent. Botswana’s total increased by 0.8 percent. The month of January has accounted for 28.9 percent of total goods transported by rail in Q1 2020,” Statistics Botswana said.

Furthermore, months of February and March accounted for 31.0 and 40.1 percent respectively.

The goods that were transported by rail in the months of January and February declined when compared to previous year with January registering 27.4 percent while February posted 2.4 percent fall.

The statistics body further said total Imports increased by 12.5 percent while total exports decreased by 6.0 percent when compared to the previous quarter with local traffic going down by 6.6% as well.