The narrative that Botswana is a Toyota country continues to play itself out as the Japanese car-maker is still occupies the number one spot in the local vehicle market.
Vehicle registrations data compiled by the national statistics agency – Statistics Botswana (SB) for the third quarter of 2020 (Q3:2020) shows that Toyota registered 37.5 percent of total first registrations, proving to be the most popular make in the country.
Honda and Mazda followed with 10.7 and 10.3 percent respectively while Yamaha proved to be the favourite motor cycle, accounting for 64.1 percent of total motor cycles.
Statistics Botswana says a total of 11,818 motor vehicle first registrations were recorded in Q3 2020 and 72.1 percent of them were passenger cars. Motor vehicle first registrations in Q3 2020 increased by 123.8 percent from 5,281 registered in the previous quarter.
“Out of the total first registrations recorded in Q3 2020, 80.1 percent were used vehicles. New and re-built vehicles made up 19.9 and 0.1 percent of the total respectively”, reads part of the Transport & Infrastructure Stats Brief published by Statistics Botswana last week.
The data contained in the brief further shows that of all passenger cars which were registered for the first time, 96.2 percent of them were used vehicles while on the contrary 81.3 percent on newly registered vans were new vehicles.
A breakdown of the brief stats also shows that most of the vehicles registered during the quarter under review were from Japan (69.4%), followed by South Africa with 19.9 percent. Most of the vehicles from Japan were used, accounting for 99.6 percent of vehicles from Japan. On the other hand, most of the vehicles from South Africa were new, constituting 78.0 percent of vehicles from South Africa. Botswana origin vehicles accounted for only 5.2 percent of firstly registrations.
VEHICLE LEVY
The numbers of imported vehicles could soon go down following a decision by the government of Botswana to impose a levy on second hand imported cars. The decision was first made public in February when the country’s Finance Minister – Dr Thapelo Matsheka read the national budget.
However, a local researcher says the decision was not informed by data on emission of Green House Gases.
Professor Julius Atlhopheng says the fact that someone could have found excessive emission of Green House Gases (GHGs) in Gaborone is not indicative of the fact that these occur throughout the country.
