(Updates with comment from IMF in third paragraph.)

Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Uganda’s economic growth may ease to “a bit below 5 percent” in the current fiscal year due to the global slowdown, the International Monetary Fund said.

Growth in the 12 months ending June 30 will be between 4.5 percent and 5 percent, below the lender’s initial forecast of 5 percent in the second half of 2011, Thomas Richardson, the IMF’s senior resident representative in Uganda, said in an e-mailed response to questions today.

“Our current thinking is that growth will be a bit below 5 percent this year, somewhere in the neighborhood of 4.5-5, due to the slower global growth outlook,” he said.

East Africa’s third-biggest economy expanded by 6.7 percent in fiscal 2010-2011, beating an earlier estimate of 6.3 percent, because of better-than-expected agricultural output, Chris Mukiza, the director of economic statistics at the Uganda Bureau of Statistics, said on Oct. 13.

--Editors: Jennifer M. Freedman, Ben Holland

To contact the reporter on this story: Fred Ojambo in Kampala at fojambo@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Paul Richardson at pmrichardson@bloomberg.net