Namibia’s trade balance improved by more than 800 million- NSA

The month of April 2023 has seen the country’s trade balance improving by N.dollars 893 million from N.dollars 2.2 billion recorded in March 2023 and N.dollars 3.5 billion observed in April 2022 respectively.

This was contained in the Namibia Merchandise Trade Statistics Bulletin issued by the Namibia Statistics Agency (NSA) here on Wednesday.

“International merchandise trade plays a crucial role in economic development as it links producers and consumers located in different countries into a global economic system,” NSA said.

In this context, the agency said the availability of timely and high-quality trade statistics becomes a pre-condition for an in-depth analysis of the employment, production, income, consumption and overall welfare at the country and global levels.

According to NSA, Namibia’s trade composition by partner showed that South Africa emerged as Namibia’s largest market for both exports and imports.

The composition of the export basket for the month of April 2023 mainly comprised minerals such as diamonds, Non- monetary gold, uranium, copper blisters and fish.

Fish remains the only non-mineral product within the top five products exported.

The NSA said the import basket mainly comprised petroleum oils, motor vehicles for the transportation of goods, iron and steel bars, motor cars for the transportation of persons as well as civil engineering and contractors’ equipment.

“For the month under review, re-exports increased by 0.8 per cent month-on- month and 47.7 per cent year-on-year. The re-exports basket mainly comprised of diamonds, copper blisters and petroleum oils,” the agency stated.

It further indicated that for the month under review Namibia imported articles of cement, concrete and artificial stones valued at N.dollars 3.5 million mainly sourced from South Africa while on the supply side, the country exported the same commodity worth N.dollars 0.1 million mostly destined to Angola.

Source: The Namibia Press Agency