Port Louis, Jan 8 (IANS): Mauritius's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will expand by 3.7 percent in 2016, the World Bank has said in its "Global Economic Outlook" report.

The forecast represents a slight increase of 0.2 percentage point for the 2015 forecasted growth, Xinhua cited the World Bank report as saying.

The World Bank was more cautious than the International Monetary Fund which estimated that Mauritius's economy will grow at four percent in 2016.

As for the Sub-Saharan Africa region, the World Bank said in the report released on Wednesday that economic expansion will surpass the 3.4 percent registered in 2015 to 4.2 percent, mostly due to "stabilisation of prices of basic products".

The performance will vary from one sub-region to the other, and the two biggest economies on the continent, Nigeria and South Africa, will each record GDP growth of 4.6 percent and 1.4 percent respectively (against 3.3 percent and 1.3 percent in 2015).

The highest expansion rates in Africa will be in Ethiopia (10.2 percent), Democratic Republic of Congo (8.6 percent) and Cote d' Ivoire (8.3 percent).

The global economy is expected to expand by 2.9 percent in 2016 against 2.4 percent in 2015, the World Bank report said.