Almost all of us have seen examples of overpriced goods in stores in Botswana belonging to South African chains. Just over a year ago, we looked at one store which was well known for what seemed like an abusive pricing policy in Botswana.
This chain would simply import products from South Africa with a label showing the price in Rand and then put another label on top with a new price in Pula. All it took was to peel off the Pula label and compare it with the Rand price to establish that the prices were being significantly marked up. For example, one item we found was marked for sale in SA for R28.99 but was labelled here for P31.80. When we looked at the exchange rates at the time the markup was over 20%. Other products had a mark-up of closer to 40%. We found one item that was marked as being on a 2-for-1 sale in South Africa, but when we bought two here in Botswana we were charged for them separately. When you did the maths for that purchase, the current exchange rate and the absence of the special offer in Botswana the markup was over 50%.
