{"id":91402,"date":"2016-06-16T00:04:23","date_gmt":"2016-06-16T04:04:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/countingpips.com\/?p=91402"},"modified":"2016-06-16T00:04:23","modified_gmt":"2016-06-16T04:04:23","slug":"namibia-holds-rate-inflation-seen-higher-but-manageable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/2016\/06\/namibia-holds-rate-inflation-seen-higher-but-manageable\/","title":{"rendered":"Namibia holds rate, inflation seen higher, but manageable"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"inves-4282711286\" class=\"inves-below-title-posts inves-entity-placement\"><div id =\"posts_date_custom\"><div align=\"left\">June 16, 2016<\/div><hr style=\"border: none; border-bottom: 3px solid black;\">\r\n<\/div><\/div><p>By <a href=\"http:\/\/www.centralbanknews.info\/\"><u>CentralBankNews.info<\/u><\/a><br \/>\n&nbsp; &nbsp; Namibia&#8217;s central bank left its benchmark repo rate steady at 7.00 percent to &#8220;continue supporting the country&#8217;s economic growth&#8221; amidst a slow and fragile recovery in its trading partners.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; The Bank of Namibia, which has raised its rates twice this year by a total of 50 basis points, added that inflation had risen in the first five months of this year and is expected to increase gradually for the rest of this year, &#8220;though remaining within manageable levels.&#8221;<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; Namibia&#8217;s inflation rate rose to a year-high of 6.7 percent in May compared with January&#8217;s 5.3 percent. The average rate in 2015 was 3.4 percent.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; Namibia&#8217;s dollar (NAD) has been firming since mid-January &#8211; after depreciating by 25 percent against the U.S. dollar last year &#8211; with the central bank&#8217;s rate hikes supporting the NAD.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; Today the NAD was trading at 15.2 to the dollar, up almost 2 percent this year.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; Despite a decline in the country&#8217;s international reserves, the central bank said they remain sufficient to sustain the one-to-one line to the South African rand. Reserves amounted to N$22.1 billion as of June 13, down from N$26.6 billion as of April 11.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; The performance of Namibia&#8217;s economy in the first four months of this year was described as &#8220;satisfactory,&#8221; by the central bank, with growth supported by wholesale and retail trade, government construction and manufacturing.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; In contrast, the mining sector slowed due to a decline in the production of diamonds and zine.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; Growth is expected to remain positive, the central bank said, although the slowdown in its trading partners, soft commodity prices, a volatile exchange rate and drought pose risks.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; Domestic demand, as reflected in private sector credit extension, slowed to average annual growth of 12.9 percent &nbsp;in the first four months of the year compared with growth of 15.9 percent in the same 2015 period.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp;Growth in installment credit, something the central bank has frequently been concerned about, eased to 13.1 percent from 20.1 percent.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp; &nbsp; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.centralbanknews.info\/\">www.CentralBankNews.info<\/a><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By CentralBankNews.info &nbsp; &nbsp; Namibia&#8217;s central bank left its benchmark repo rate steady at 7.00 percent to &#8220;continue supporting the country&#8217;s economic growth&#8221; amidst a slow and fragile recovery in its trading partners.&nbsp; &nbsp; The Bank of Namibia, which has raised its rates twice this year by a total of 50 basis points, added that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","no-post-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91402"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91403,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91402\/revisions\/91403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}