Rwanda’s National carrier – Rwandair. Air transport among sectors that did pretty well in the third quarter
Rwanda’s economy has registered 10% Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth in the third quarter of 2022 despite a significant slowdown in the construction sector by 17% which officials say is a normal “downtime period.”
The GDP figures were released by National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda (NISR) at Ministry of Finance And Economic Planning- MINECOFIN, December 19.
As the country starts to recover fully from the Covid-19 shock, the good performance was recorded in various sectors including; service sector where hotels and restaurants increased by 90%, ICT increased by 34%, education sector 26%, transport sector by 26%, wholesale and retail 20% and finance by 8%.
Other significant increases were registered in the mining and quarrying sector with 5%. Cassiterite exports only increased by 33%, and coltan increased by 13%.
The manufacturing sector increased by 9%, food processing by 11% and the beverage are by 9%. The textile industry market 24% increase and wood manufacturing 8%.
According to NISR report, air and land transport is among sectors that are currently doing well. Air transport grew by 81%, while land transport grew by 17%.
“There are two things; more passengers with the national carrier from existing routes and new routes. It can also be as a result of the pick period,” Yusuf Murangwa, Director General of NISR said.
The figures from NISR indicate that, in the third quarter of 2022, GDP at current market prices was estimated at Rwf3,583 billion, up from Rwf2,758 billion in the third quarter of 2021. Services contributed 47%, agriculture 24%, industry 21% while net direct taxes accounted for 8 % of GDP.
Despite the overall growth of 10% from 7% of the second quarter, some sectors did not do well. Agriculture is among them, food crops were reportedly affected by unfavorable climate conditions pushing a decrease of 1%. Coffee production decreased by 7.2% but tea production increased by 22%.
“There are existing irrigation programs. We hope we can deal with such challenges. It is one of the planned mitigation processes,” Dr. Uzziel Ndagijimana, Minister of MINECOFIN said.
Meanwhile, for the construction sector, officials believe that the decrease is a normal trend and no cause for alarm.
“Down time period is normal. However, we shall continue to monitor it. In this period, investors build houses and wait for tenants to occupy them before constructing others,” Yusuf Murangwa, Director General of NISR said.
In the previous quarter (Q2 2022), agriculture sector grew by 2% and contributed 0.5% points to overall GDP growth. Within agriculture, export crops increased by 17% boosted by 19% increase in the production of coffee and 2% in the production of tea.
For mining and quarrying in the second quarter, activities increased by 9%. Service sector increased by 12% and contributed 5.6% points to overall GDP growth. Within services, wholesale and retail trade increased by 17% while transport services increased by 27%.
