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Local economy slips into recession

Local economy slips into recession

15 December 2016 – The Namibia Statistics Agency’s Statistician General, Alex Shimuafeni, said today that the real GDP for the third quarter of 2016 recorded a 1% shrinkage compared to 5% recorded in 2015.

Shimuafeni said that the poor performance is mainly attributed to diamond mining, construction and public administration and defence sectors registering a reduction in real value added. The decline is attributed to “tightening the belt” or “the austerity measures” on government expenditure.

According to Shimuafeni the decline of 5.6% in real value added of mining is again mostly owed to the diamond subsector that registered a reduction in real value added of 13% and the production of diamond has reduced during the period under review.

Construction sector recorded a decline of 12.3% compared to an outstanding growth of 36% registered in the third quarter of 2015. The performance in the sector is mainly due to government construction has declined in real value by 19.4%,” he said.

Furthermore he said the public administration and defence sector declined by 5.3% in real value added in the third quarter of 2016 compared to an increase of 13.2% estimated in the corresponding quarter of 2015.

Adding on, he said that over the year, wholesale and retail trade, electricity and water and health sectors recorded slower growth rates in real value added of 3.6 percent (4.9 percent in Quarter 3 of 2015), 5.3% (7.5% in Quarter 3 of 2015) and 4.1% (6.6% in Quarter 2 of 2015), individually.

Despite the poor performance of the economy, he said, other sectors such as agriculture, hotels and restaurants, financial intermediation and transport and communication sectors, each recorded stronger growth of 1.6%, 10.3%, 3.4% and 1.8% in real value added in the third quarter of 2016.

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