According to the World Bank Group's income classifications for Fiscal Year 2026 (July 1, 2025 - 30 June, 2026), Namibia has been reclassified from an upper-middle-income country to a lower-middle-income country.
Namibia was the only country whose classification moved downward this year, the World Bank said.
The reclassification comes despite Namibia's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growing by 3.7% in 2024, a 0.7-point deceleration from 2023.
According to the institution, inflation (based on the GDP deflator) slowed from 6.6% in 2023 to 3.3% in 2024.
"One of the main factors behind the slower GDP growth was a sharp deceleration in mining and quarrying, for which growth went from +19.3% in 2023 to -1.2% in 2024 due to weak demand for diamonds," the Blogs added.
Furthermore, population data was adjusted upwards by the United Nations Population Division with a 13.8% increase for 2023, leading to a 12.9% decrease in the Atlas Gross National Income per capita, impacting the country's income classification.
Every year, the World Bank Group classifies the world's economies into four income groups: low, lower-middle, upper-middle, and high. These classifications, updated each year on 1 July, are based on the previous year's Gross National Income (GNI) per capita, expressed in U.S. dollars using the Atlas method.
