Statistical Business Register

Business

A Statistical Business Register (SBR) is a list of registered and operating companies (establishments and enterprises) in Botswana. The term statistical business register includes the qualifier statistical to emphasize that the register is created for statistical purposes. It is also meant to guard against any conflicting definitions that may arise from existing business registers developed for purposes other than statistical. 

Other distinguishing factors in the SBR are in the form of variables or components of establishments and enterprises which are;

  • Incorporation/company number
  • Tax identification number
  • Business names (registered and trading)
  • Contact details (postal and physical address, emails and telephone numbers)
  • Nature of principal business (business activity)
  • Turnover
  • Number of employees
  • Nature of company (institutional type)
  • Activity status (operational status).   

The SBR primarily serves as a critical baseline sampling frame for all economic surveys. It is also used by academic researchers and entrepreneurs/investors in order to derive evidence based decision making for investment purposes.

Business Register would:

  • Support updates of survey frames
  • Timely updating of the frames on new start-ups and closed establishments.
  • Keep track of current business entities.
  • Enable stratification for improved results and coincidently reduce response burden.
  • Classify units (enterprises and establishments) in a uniform way enabling aggregation of results of different surveys.
  • Improve coverage and timeliness of the surveys.
  • Provide useful information even without any survey
  • Attending to requests from external stakeholders

Classification

Statistics Botswana has adapted the International Standard Industrial Classification Revision 4 (ISIC Rev.4) to form Botswana Standard Industrial Classification Revision 4 (BSIC Rev.4).
 

Statistical Business Register
Top 5 Economic ActivityNumber of Operating establishments
Wholesale & Retail Trade5539
Hotels & Restaurants2192
Real Estate, Renting & Business Activity1795
Education1332
Manufacturing1313
Top 5 Locations Number of Operating establishments
Gaborone6234
Francistown1472
Kweneng1000
Southern938
Serowe895