Africa-Press – Namibia. BETWEEN July and September this year, the Namibian economy produced goods and services worth N$50 billion. This is N$4,4 billion more than the N$45,6 billion registered in the corresponding quarter of 2021.
Announcing the increase, the Namibia Statistics Agency (NSA) statistician general, Alex Shimuafeni, said the economy remained in the positive trajectory for six consecutive quarters.
In real terms, the domestic economy expanded by 4,3% during the third quarter (Q3) this year, a slow growth compared to 5,6% posted in the third quarter of the preceding year.
It was not an all growth quarter though, as sectors such as agriculture and forestry (-14,2%), financial services activities (-4,7%) and public administration and defence (-2,7%) posted contractions.
Positive growth was primarily driven by the manufacturing and wholesale and retail trade sectors that increases of 12,9%, and 10,2% in real value added compared to 6,9%, and 0,4% registered in the corresponding quarter of 2021, respectively.
Activities slowed in the sector of mining and quarrying (from 34,4% to 14,9%) and hotels and restaurants (from 19,6% to 1,7%).
Total demand in the economy slowed down, as observed in all the components of final demand except gross fixed capital formation.
Private final consumption expenditure slowed down to register a 12,8% during the period under review, compared to the 30,1% recorded in the parallel quarter of 2021.
The slowdown in demand for final goods is due to the pressure on income as prices rise, resulting in reduced imports for consumption.
Furthermore, government final consumption expenditure posted a slower growth of 0,2% compared to 1,2% recorded in the third quarter of 2021, reflecting the ongoing fiscal consolidation as the government continues to curb expenditure.
The statistics agency said inasmuch as gross fixed capital expenditure posted a decline of 12,8% during the period under review, this shows an improved performance relative to the contraction of 24,6% registered in the same quarter of 2021.
BETTER STANDARD
NSA also announced that Namibia has now become the fifth sub-Saharan African country to sign up on the Special Data Dissemination Standard of the International Monetary Fund.
This standard enhances data transparency and promotes data development of sound statistical systems. It also focuses on timeliness and periodicity when disseminating data important in assessing macroeconomic performance and policy.
The macroeconomic performance is informed by data on real sector, fiscal sector, financial sector and external sector.
This is with the aim to provide key data of countries’ access capital markets and financial markets.
These key data categories are produced by the NSA, Bank of Namibia and the Ministry of Finance. Countries’ data categories will be posted on the national summary data page hosted on the IMF open data platform.
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