The Bank of Namibia’s monetary policy committee has decided to increase the repo rate by 50 basis points to 7,75% with immediate effect.
This brings the prime rate to 11,50%. Namibia is now 50 basis points behind South Africa and at par with other common monetary area countries – Lesotho and Eswathini.
This is the third time the benchmark is being edged up this year.
The latest announcement by the bank’s governor Johannes !Gawaxab comes after the South African Reserve Bank hiked their repo rate to 8,25% last month.
Repo rate is the rate at which commercial banks borrow money from the central bank of a country.
During the previous announcement two months ago, the deciding committee opted to increase the benchmark interest rate to 7,25%.
At that repo rate, the prime lending rate stood at 11,00% – the highest it has been in a long time.
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