WINDHOEK – Daniel Motinga, Consulting Economist at First National Bank (FNB) Namibia, has announced that the Rand Merchant Bank (RMB) Global Markets research report for Sub-Saharan African countries, dated September 26, 2014, reveals that the Namibia Statistics Agency has revised both the national counts for the period ending 2013 as well as the quarterly gross domestic product (GDP) numbers.
“In terms of the quarterly numbers, GDP growth for the first quarter of 2014 was revised upwards from a previous estimate of 1.6 percent to 4.4 percent. This is indeed a significant revision. It is worth noting that manufacturing, utilities and the tourism proxy were revised downwards while most of the other sector growth rates were revised upwards. Of course, revisions of this sort for high frequency data are to be expected but seem overdone.”
In terms of actual growth rates, Motinga said, manufacturing and tourism contracted by 13 percent and 16 percent, respectively, followed by agriculture, which contracted by 4.4 percent. Agriculture has been experiencing negative growth for the past six quarters. Mining, on the other hand, seems to have exited its recession by registering a growth rate of 6 percent during the second quarter of 2014 following a near 2 percent contraction in the first quarter of 2014.
“Construction accounts for significant growth, considering the strength of many projects, as it grew once again in excess of 30 percent over this period. Public sector initiatives like mass housing scheme will continue to boost the construction sector,” said the economist. “The real interesting growth was the 1.4 percent recorded for the wholesale and retail sub-sector, which grew marginally by 1.4 percent. This is the lowest the sector has grown in terms of the quarterly numbers since the first quarter of 2013 and is indicative of perhaps a decline in household spending.”
Motinga continued by saying that it was very difficult to square the decline in wholesale and retail sector growth with the demand for credit by households which remains at healthy levels of around 14 percent year-on-year and that the growth outlook for this year remained at 4.5 percent, which was in line with trend growth. “The revised NSA annual numbers for 2013 show a higher growth rate of 5.1 percent versus a previous forecast of 4.4 percent. The 2011 and 2012 prints have been revised downwards.”