Zambia’s Economic Growth Has Dropped to 2.6% In The First Quarter

Zambia’s economic growth has taken a down turn and slumped to just 2.6% in the first quarter of 2018 – this is down from 3.2%. This is a result of negative growth rates in agriculture and transport sectors.

This means that Zambia’s economic growth rate of 2.6 per cent during the quarter under review has been the lowest since the final quarter of 2015, when growth at 1.8 per cent during that quarter was recorded.

“The mining and quarrying industry contributed the highest to the first quarter growth with 1.4 percentage points, followed by the financial & insurance, information & communication and wholesale & retail trade industries with 0.9, 0.6 and 0.4 percentage points, respectively. The industries with the highest growth rates were information and communication (28.1 per cent), financial and insurance (26.6 per cent) and mining & quarrying (14.1 per cent).”

Analysis from the CSO’s National Accounts data reveals that negative growth rates were recorded in the agriculture, forestry and fishing sectors of -1.9 per cent, while the transportation and storage industries also contributed a negative growth rate of -0.2 per cent to the economy.

GDP is the total value of an economy’s domestic output of goods and services, typically in a fiscal year, and is one of the key