Angola: GDP swells 0.5 pct in Q3, up 0.8 pct YoY, after nine negative quarters – INE

Angola’s gross domestic product swelled by 0.5% in the third quarter of 2021, and was 0.8% larger than in the same period a year earlier, interrupting nine successive quarters of decreases, according to the country’s National Statistics Institute (INE).

According to a release on the national accounts for the third quarter of 2021, Angola’s GDP in the period was 0.5% larger than in the second quarter, after seasonal adjustment, and grew 0.8 percent year on year.

Trade was the activity that most influenced this variation, with gross value added in trade in the third quarter around 18.4% more than in the same quarter of 2020, adding 3.52 percentage points to the variation in GDP, which the INE said was also driven by significant increases in agricultural production, fishing, manufactured goods and imports. 

This was followed by transport, which made a positive contribution of 1.0 point to the total variation, due to “exponential growth in the airline sub-sector, as a result of an increase in flight frequencies, as a result of partial relief from measures to combat Covid-19, and on the other hand, the entry into operation of new operators in the urban transport service at the level of Luanda.”

Fishing, due to increased catches in the period, and construction, which was driven by the significant increase in imports of raw materials (cement and clinker), also contributed positively to GDP, adding 1.0 and 0.9 percentage points respectively to the total.

On the negative side, the oil sector stood out: gross oil value added in the third quarter was 11.1% smaller than in the same quarter of the previous year, knocking 4.7 percentage points from the total change in GDP. That was due to the decrease in the quantity of oil extracted, amid continued agreed production cuts by the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries+ (OPEC+), falling levels of crude oil stocks and China’s decision to lower import quotas for independent refineries.

The ‘Other Services’ category, with a 13.6% decline in gross value added, contributed a negative 1.2 percentage points to the total variation in GDP, due to the substantial drop in hotel and restaurant services, of the order of 51% year on year, with this segment having a larger weighting within the group than other services.

The decline in gross value added of Financial Intermediation and Insurance, of around 36.8% year on year in the third quarter, also had a negative impact, contributing 0.5 percentage points to the total change in GDP. The sector shrank due to a drop in income relative to costs in the period in question, as well as inflation, explains the INE release.

In the year to September as a whole, Angola’s GDP was 0.04% larger than the same period in 2020.

This INE release introduces some methodological changes, with information from the 2019 Annual National Accounts introduced in the series; new indicators of variations were increased and year-on-year variations were calculated from the non-seasonally adjusted base, while the inter-quarter variation is dependent on the adjusted base.