EU poised to bail out Nepru

A EUROPEAN Union (EU) grant would consolidate the activities of the Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit (Nepru) and bail it out of its financial crisis.

Nepru Director Fanuel Tjingaete, in a media statement on Friday, downplayed the current crisis and said that the EU grant would be paid over as soon as possible and that auditing company Ernst and Young had been hired to ‘do the long-overdue audit’.In a statement titled ‘True facts about Nepru’, Tjingaete did not comment directly on a report in The Namibian last week, which revealed that severe cash-flow problems were being experienced and that staff had been informed salary payments would be delayed.Tjingaete also confirmed that Nepru’s main sponsor for years, the African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF), was only willing to release pledged funds once the audit has been completed. This, he said, ‘has naturally put Nepru in a somewhat uncomfortable financial situation’.Nepru is a government-linked economic think tank which advises on economic research issues. Its Board of Trustees is headed by Dr Zed Ngavirue, and includes a number of prominent Government and financial figures such as Ben Amathila, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah and Paul Hartmann of the Bank of Namibia.Tjingaete, who took over as Nepru Director in May 2009, added that a financial manager had been appointed at the same time to compile financial statements outstanding since 2005, and that the process was also underway.He confirmed the institution had been crippled by numerous resignations prior to his taking over, and that staff were now ‘one hundred per cent indigenous’.