Botswana's finance ministry is due to publish new pension prudential rules which will hike the minimum that may be invested locally from 30% to 50%.

The Ministry of Finance's Director of Insurance and Pensions, Patrinah Masalela, said although the finalising of the regulations is at an advanced stage, a phased approach would be adopted, so minimum percentages to be invested would progressively reach the 50% mark.

"We are not going to say right away all the pension funds must have brought that 50%," Masalela said. "All those movements in percentages have been determined looking at what the monthly contributions are, the money out there already in the market and also looking at the avenues we can come up with to absorb the money."

She went on to say: "We are going to look at the whole matter in totality. We are looking and saying, for instance, at the Bank of Botswana, 'why have people not been buying our instruments?' "We look at that, and once we align everything, the pension funds can have vehicles to invest their money in."

Amendments to the pension prudential rules have been in the pipeline for over 10 years. A proposal was put forward by the Non-Bank Financial Institutions Regulatory Authority in 2010 to move to a minimum of 70% domestic investments over two decades.

Furthermore, Masalela added that even without the phasing, the proposed modifications were not "out of reach or shocking" as pension funds held 38% of their assets locally on average, Mmegi Online reports.

"A return is an objective, just as much as development is an objective, and it's up to us to balance that," she said to BusinessWeek. "As a country, we cannot shelve our own development, talking only about a return. We have to balance these things."

She added: "If we don't develop our country, who will develop it for us? "(At the moment) we are taking this money to develop other people's economies, but we are saying let's think for ourselves, and this is one of the avenues."