Kelvin Chiringa
Central bank deputy governor Ebson Uanguta has cautioned that the domestic economy can not afford any more lockdowns as the economy continues to titter in the grip of the pandemic, driven by the delta and omicron variants.
Uanguta has said the bank’s stance on locking down is not meant to undercut whatever decision President Hage Geingob will take when next he faces the nation on December the 15th.
Geingob, for his part, has warned that if the Covid-19 situation spirals out of hand, primarily spurred by a disregard of Covid regulations, he will not hesitate to lock down the economy.
At the back of this warning, the health ministry has raised its red flags over a hike of Covid numbers at the Katutura Intermediate State Hospital.
The ministry has announced that the Katutura Intermediate State Hospital has suspended visitations to patients.
The ministry said the spike influenced this in Covid-19 new infections.
This has driven further fears that the economy may not, after all, escape a shutdown.
“As a country, if you ask me, can we afford a lockdown? I think our answer to that will be that if you look really at the stage where the economy is, we can ill afford a lockdown. Our economy now needs all kinds of support, and if we get into another lockdown, it will have a further negative implication.
“But of course, if the President on the 15th announces a lockdown, the President is looking at other various factors. That is his responsibility as the head of state. Us we are only looking at it from an economic perspective, but he is looking at it from other different perspectives,” Uanguta said.
He was speaking at the announcement of the monetary policy committee’s decision on the repo rate, which has been kept unchanged at 3.75% this week Wednesday.
Uanguta has thrown the ball in the court of Namibians to respond to the call for more protection and wad off a potentially crippling fourth wave.
The first round of lockdown itself was devastating for business.
By April 2020, Evelina, Julius and Samuel, Nuugulu and Lukas Homateni, in their paper Estimating the Economic Impact of COVID-19: A Case Study of Namibia, found that an estimated amount of N$5 to N$7.5 billion Namibia dollars was lost in GDP owing to the impact of the lockdown measures on the various sectors in the primary, secondary and tertiary industries.
“Due to loss of income, loss of business trading hours and loss of jobs; a loss of private demand (consumption) of N$6 billion to N$12 billion was estimated for Namibia. This loss takes back the country’s private consumption to the level it was four to five years back,” they said.
But the latest statement from the bank says that economic activity somewhat improved in the past ten months with positive indicators coming from mining, wholesale and retail trade, communication and tourism.
The bank expects an economic recovery of 3.3% in 2022, but that will likely be offset by the pandemic, the emergence of more variants, among other factors.
