NAMIBIA’S trade with Southern Africa has dropped from 60,4 per cent in 1998 to 51,3 per cent in 2006, showing that, despite regional governments and the international donor community’s push for integration, the country is ‘disintegrating’ from the region.
The 2008 yearbook ‘Monitoring Regional Integration in Southern Africa’, which was launched in Windhoek on Monday night, concludes that although Namibia is still strongly integrated in southern Africa, its trade with the region has decreased significantly.
‘Namibia’s overall pattern is one of disintegration,’ co-author Rigmar Osterkamp says in the book.
In comparison, Botswana remains highly integrated in the region although its trade with southern Africa seems to have stagnated.
In 1999, 42 per cent of Botswana’s trade was intra-regional. This figure dropped slightly to 41,6 per cent by 2006.
Breaking down the trade statistics, Osterkamp says the only regions Namibia has increased its trade with during the eight years under review are Northern Europe, Central Africa and Asia.
Namibia’s trade with Northern Europe stood at 9,9 per cent in 1998. By 2006 it had increased to 14,7 per cent. Trade with Central Africa in 1998 represented 2,8 per cent of Namibia’s total trade. By 2006 it had grown to 3,9 percent.
Trade with East Asia, West Asia, Southeast Asia and South-Central Asia increased from 1,9 per cent in 1998 to 10,4 per cent in 2006.
Relationships between Namibia and the rest of its 21 trading partners weakened, according to Osterkamp.
However, he stresses that the way in which trade flow is recorded might have influenced some figures, skewing integration in favour of southern Africa.
Goods supplied by South African firms to Namibia are apparently recorded as imports from South Africa, irrespective of whether these goods originated from South Africa or elsewhere.
‘It may even be possible that goods are recorded as imports from South Africa which have been ordered by Namibia directly from overseas suppliers, but passed solely through the territory of South Africa to the final destination,’ Osterkamp explains.
He believes that Namibia’s disintegration from southern Africa may partly be the result of Government’s political wish ‘to loosen the high degree of trade integration with South Africa, rightly understood as trade dependence, and to intensify external trade with regions other than South Africa.’
jo-mare@namibian.com.na
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