Finance and Public Enterprises Minister, Iiipumbu Shiimi said Namibia should work to achieve broad-based economic growth, which is now fuelled by the mining industry.
Shiimi said the local economy has experienced excellent growth over the previous two years, but this hasn’t been balanced growth.
The minister, during a consultation on the mid-term budget review with civil society organisations here on Monday, said that the local economy had experienced positive growth during the past two years.
The economy grew by 3.5 per cent in 2021 and 4.6 per cent last year.
“These numbers we have not seen in quite a long time. But I should hasten to say that growth is still not balanced. It is coming from the mining sector, and the mining sector is not a big employer of people. So it is contributing to the GDP of the country but is very concentrated,” he said.
“We need to ensure that growth becomes broad-based so that we can start to feel the impact. Because when you tell the people, the youth, that the economy is growing, they will say, ‘we don’t see it, I’m still unemployed’. So we need to work very hard to ensure that this broad-based economic growth is taking place,” he added.
According to the minister, inflation is still the largest threat to the world economy.
“But the fortunate thing is that we have started seeing a downward trend with regard to inflation,” he said.
However, Shiimi cautioned that a drop in inflation does not mean prices are going to decrease, “it just means that they are going to grow at a slower pace than before”.
Source: Namibia Press Agency