Namibia’s central bank lowered its 2017 growth forecast to 2.1 percent from its previous view of 2.9 percent, citing uncertainty around the pace of recovery in the price of uranium, it said on Monday.
The southern Africa country’s economy hardly grew last year, slumping from a more than 5 percent expansion a year earlier due to deep contractions in construction, uranium and diamond industries.
“While there is now more evidence of a strong recovery in agriculture and mining, earlier expectations about high growth in the uranium sub-sector have been lowered because of uncertainty around the pace of recovery in the uranium price and in uranium output volumes,” Bank of Namibia said in a statement.
Spot prices of uranium, used to fuel nuclear reactors, dipped to a 13-year low late last year and have rebounded only modestly in 2017. They have stayed stubbornly weak since a 2011 tsunami in Japan led to the shutdown of all the country’s nuclear reactors.
Reuters
