State-owned enterprises have been urged to stop relying on increased state funding and instead make effective use of the resources already allocated to them.
Minister of finance Ericah Shafudah said this at a recent breakfast with president Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah and public enterprise chief executives in Windhoek.
Shafudah said state-owned enterprises (SOEs) should make reaching the goals of sixth National Development Plan a daily priority.
“’Limited financial resources.’ I do not know how we are going to get it out of our vocabularies. There’s no day we are going to have adequate financial assistance. That world does not exist,” she said.
Shafudah urged SOEs to use the funds allocated to them effectively, saying it was time to analyse how much the government contributes to individual enterprises.
“Perhaps it is time a trend analysis is conducted to see the contribution to SOEs,” she said, noting that funding for some SOEs runs into more than N$1 billion.
The minister said the narrative of limited funding should come to an end and SOEs should instead focus on improving the management of public financial resources.
“The money is there, because if it was not there, you wouldn’t have asked contractors to give you 10%,” she said.
Namibia Ports Authority chief executive Andrew Kanime, during a panel discussion, urged SOEs to look beyond government funding and explore partnerships with the private sector to achieve financial sustainability.
