Competition Law Update
The Ministry of Trade and Entrepreneurship has exercised its powers, in terms of the Competition Act, to promulgate the Competition (Amendment) Regulations, 2026 published on the 18th of September 2026, to amend the Competition Regulations, 2019.
The amendments provide for a revised merger notification fee from 0.01% to a new significantly higher fee of 0.1% of the merging enterprises’ combined turnover or assets in Botswana, whichever is higher. This means that a merger filing fee which was calculated as BWP10,000 can easily be in the region of BWP100,000. Notwithstanding this, the Regulations have also introduced a merger filing fee cap of BWP4 million, just like in other jurisdictions such as South Africa which has a much lesser cap of ZAR735,000. The Competition and Consumer Authority will continue to issue merger advisory opinions and these will now be done at a non-refundable fee of BWP5000. In terms of the Regulations, the Authority will have 21 days to issue the opinion, which will also be non-binding on the Authority and subject to revision under a set of circumstances.
