Ask what it costs to start a business in Botswana and you will be told a registration fee. It is a true number and it is a small part of the answer, which is why the first month so often costs more than the plan said.
So: the whole list, with our own prices stated as our own, and the parts set by somebody else flagged as exactly that.
Registration: P750, and how it splits
Through PulaGo, registering a company is P750 in total — P380 of CIPA charges for the name reservation and the registration, plus our P370 for preparing and lodging everything. You pay P500 to start and P250 once the company is registered.
The split is the part worth internalising, not the total. Any honest quote separates the government fee, which you would pay no matter who did the work, from the service fee, which is what you are paying a person for. If a quote does not break those apart, ask which part is which — and if the answer is vague, that is your answer.
CIPA sets its own fees and can change them. Check the current schedule on cipa.co.bw before you budget.
The costs that follow registration
None of these are optional in the way they sound. They are the difference between a company that exists and a business that can operate.
- BURS registration — P350 with PulaGo, which gets you your TIN and obtains your tax clearance certificate. A bank and most corporate customers will ask for it.
- Company secretary — P300 for a vetted professional appointed to the statutory role.
- Bank account opening — P350 to have the resolution, mandate and full pack prepared and lodged with your bank.
- Your trading or industrial licence — the council’s fee, plus whoever prepares the application. This one genuinely depends on where you are.
The licence, and why nobody can quote it blind
Licence fees are set by the local council rather than centrally, so the price depends on where you will operate. The total is always the council’s fee plus the cost of the work. A real example from our own files: a pre-school licence under Gaborone City Council was P500 in council fees plus P1,000 for the work — P1,500 in total.
That is one activity in one council, and it is offered as a shape rather than a quote. The useful rule is the one it illustrates: anyone who quotes you a licence price without first asking where the business is located is guessing.
What you will not need yet
This is where money gets spent on nothing. VAT registration becomes compulsory once taxable turnover passes the threshold BURS sets — currently P1,000,000 — and PAYE registration only matters once you have employees on a payroll. Most newly registered companies need neither for a year or more, and paying for all three tax registrations at incorporation usually means paying for something that will sit unused.
Thresholds change and BURS sets them. Confirm your own position rather than budgeting from a blog post.
The bundle, and when it is actually cheaper
Registration, BURS and the bank account are one errand pretending to be three — almost everyone who does the first does the other two within a month. The P1,300 start-your-business bundle covers all three end to end, and includes a logo, letterhead and company profile free. Priced separately those nine items come to P2,050.
When is it not worth it? If you genuinely only need the company on the register — you have an existing banking arrangement, you are not approaching corporate customers, and the branding would go unused — then P750 for the registration alone is the right number and the bundle is money you do not need to spend. We would rather say that than sell you the bigger box.
The costs that are not on anyone’s price list
Two of them, and they are usually the biggest:
- Delay. Every round trip — a rejected name with no alternatives ready, a consent form missing a signature, a bank visit without the tax number — is time you are not trading. This is almost always larger than any fee on this page.
- Getting the structure wrong. If your activity is reserved for citizens and you find out after incorporation, the fix is share transfers, amended registers and a licence application that starts over. Finding out first is free.
Everything on this page is knowable in advance. That is the actual argument for planning the whole sequence before you pay for the first step — not that the steps are expensive, but that doing them out of order is.
And if you would rather do it yourself
You can, and you should know that. Registration runs online through CIPA, and you can do the whole thing at cipa.co.bw without paying anyone a service fee. What you are buying from a service like ours is the part that is hard to do once: knowing which licence your activity needs, getting the constitution and consent forms right the first time, and having someone answer when something is queried.
PulaGo is a private company, not a government agency, and is not affiliated with or endorsed by CIPA, BURS or PPRA. Our fees are always shown separately from government fees.