Botswana sees decline in growth to 5.7% in 2011

(Reuters) – Botswana President Ian Khama said on Monday the southern African country’s economy was expected to slow to 5.7 percent this year from 7.2 percent in 2010 owing to a weak global environment.

The economy was seen picking up the pace to 7.1 percent growth in 2012, supported by a recovery in the mining sector Khama said.

“We are recovering from the worst effects of the recent global economic downturn,” he told the country’s parliament in a state of the nation address e-mailed to Reuters.

Botswana’s economy, which is heavily dependent on diamonds, contracted by 4.9 percent in 2009 as world diamond prices plummeted during the global financial crisis, before bouncing back last year.

Khama said the country’s mining sector had continued to improve in the past year on the back of demand from Asian markets.

“We now anticipate growth and diversification in the mineral sector to play a critical role in driving our economy forward,” he said.

The land-locked nation’s economy grew 9.6 percent in the second quarter compared with a 2.2 percent contraction in the first quarter, mainly due to increases in the construction and mining sectors.

A Reuters poll showed last month that analysts and economists forecast Botswana’s economy to slow to 6.2 percent this year.