South Africa’s economy contracted in the first quarter for the first time since a 2009 recession as the longest mining strike in the nation’s history cut output.

Gross domestic product fell an annualized 0.6 percent compared with the fourth quarter, when it expanded 3.8 percent, the statistics office said in a report released today in the capital, Pretoria. The median estimate of 22 economists in a Bloomberg survey was for a contraction of 0.2 percent.

An 18-week strike over pay by more than 70,000 workers has shut mines owned by Anglo American Platinum Ltd. (AMS), Impala Platinum Holdings Ltd. (IMP) and Lonmin Plc. (LMI) Mining accounts for about two-thirds of exports from South Africa, the world’s largest platinum producer.

“Mining hurt the economy the most,” Francois Stofberg, an economist at Pretoria-based Efficient Group, said by phone before the data was released. “Growth in household consumption expenditure has also been declining since last year.”

Mining fell an annualized 24.7 percent in the three-month period, the biggest quarterly contraction since the second quarter of 1967, the statistics agency said. Manufacturing dropped 4.4 percent in the three months through March.

The South Africa Reserve Bank on May 22 left its benchmark repurchase rate unchanged at 5.5 percent for a second consecutive meeting as concerns about economic growth outweighed inflation worries. The economy will probably expand 2.1 this year compared with 1.9 percent in 2013, the bank said.

Protracted strikes are a cause for concern and even short strikes are not necessarily good for economic growth, Lungisa Fuzile, the director-general of the National Treasury, said in an interview on May 21. Nigeria’s economy surpassed South Africa’s as the largest on the continent after the continent’s biggest oil producer revised its data to take account of new spending patterns.

Bloomberg