The Namibia Investment Promotion Development Board (NIPDB) has spent N$700 million over a period of six years to promote Namibia as an investment destination.
This created a project pipeline of N$174.86 billion, of which N$117.91 billion were leads, N$32.27 billion had reached a final investment decision, N$24.68 billion had seen capital deployed, and N$2.89 billion had reached operationalisation.
According to the Namibia Quarterly Economic Review by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), these figures exclude oil and gas exploration and green hydrogen.
“On the face of it then, if these investments have come about as a result of the efforts of the NIPDB, the benefit-cost ratio looks impressive: spending N$700 million to generate N$174 billion of investment for the country,” reads the report.
In the latest NIPDB annual report during the review period, four projects supported by the NIPDB began operations.
The largest of these was a N$100 million investment to upgrade the Mövenpick Hotel in Windhoek.
This was followed by Acacia Composites Manufacturers’ N$20-million investment to produce wood composites from invader bush for export to the European market and Your Kitchen’s N$17-million investment in the food sector.
All three of these projects are based in Windhoek.
The fourth project, located just outside of Okahandja, involved Bravura Namibia’s N$10.5-million investment in an aquaponics plant within a 5 500m2 greenhouse.
However, the IPPR argues that private sector investment in the economy outside of the mining, and oil and gas industries has been declining and NIPDB is yet to address it.
This is because NIPDB has the sole mandate of promoting Namibia as the best investment destination and IPPR says non-extractive private sector investment has continued and possibly even accelerated under the NIPDB.
“The private sector accounts for the lion’s share of investment in Namibia’s economy.
The question that needs to be asked is why has it been on a long-term decline? That does not seem to be a question that the NIPDB has addressed,” reads the report.
Additionally, The NIPDB is the partner institute for the World Competitiveness Ranking produced by the International Institute for Management Development, which ranked Namibia at 68 out of 69 countries.
The IPPR has advised the government to improve policies and make them more investor friendly in order to reverse the long-term decline in private sector investment.
