Namibia’s mining sector has emerged as the main driver of a sharp rise in producer inflation, with mining and quarrying prices surging 79.8% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2026 as uranium and diamond prices strengthened.
According to the Namibia Statistics Agency’s (NSA) Producer Price Index (NPPI) Bulletin, the increase in mining prices helped push overall producer prices up 50.7% compared with the second quarter of 2025.
Mining and quarrying recorded the strongest increase among the major sectors, with its index reaching 173.1 points after rising 20% from the first quarter of 2026.
Uranium recorded the biggest quarterly price increase at 46.8%, followed by diamonds at 14.3%.
“The Mining and Quarrying index recorded a strong increase of 20.0 percent quarter-on-quarter in the second quarter of 2026, while annual growth reached 79.8 percent,” the NSA said.
“The quarterly expansion was largely driven by higher producer prices for uranium (46.8%) and diamonds (14.3%). These were the main contributors to the overall increase in the index.”
On a year-on-year basis, uranium producer prices increased by 43.5%, while gold rose 20.8% and diamonds gained 17.1%.
Gold prices, however, declined 7.2% quarter-on-quarter, showing that the strong overall mining increase was not uniform across commodities.
The mining-driven increase lifted Namibia’s overall NPPI by 8.8% quarter-on-quarter to 151.9 points.
The strong mining price growth contrasts sharply with developments in the electricity sector, where producer prices continued to decline.
Producer prices for electricity generation, transmission and distribution fell 19.9% year-on-year and 6.7% quarter-on-quarter, taking the index to 80.1 points.
The index stood at 85.8 points in the first quarter of 2026 and 100 points in the second quarter of 2025.
“The sustained decline in the index indicates a continued easing of prices within the electricity generation, transmission and distribution sector over both the short and longer term,” the NSA said.
The figures show that Namibia’s headline producer price increase is being heavily influenced by the mining sector, particularly movements in uranium and diamond prices, rather than broad-based price increases across all producing industries.
