No plan on improving Namibia’s investment environment

The Institute for Public Policy Research says there is a lack of initiatives on improving Namibia’s investment environment.

This is despite private sector investment outweighing public sector investment.

Economist Robin Sherbourne says “virtually no space is devoted to improving Namibia’s business and investment environment”.

Sherbourne was commenting on some of the main commitments contained in the Swapo Manifesto Implementation Plan.

Sherbourne says there was no mention or revision to damaging legislation or regulation that holds back private investment.

“Apart from the investment promotion and facilitation bill 2021 (which has the potential to be hugely damaging to the cause of private sector investment), this major issue is not addressed,” an assessment notes.

He says some of the legislation not mentioned are the Namibian national equitable economic empowerment bill and the draft Minerals Act, which both have the potential to hinder private sector investment.

“Private sector investment vastly outweighs public sector investment, and it is the private sector that normally powers growth and employment creation,” says Sherbourne.

In 2022, Namibia was ranked as number one in terms of Africa’s foreign direct investment (FDI) performers relative to the size of their economies.

This was according to the Greenfield FDI Performance Index.

Namibia’s fourth National Development Plan (NDP4), which ran from 2012 to 2017, stated that Namibia should be the most competitive economy in the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) region by 2017.

According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index, Namibia was the fourth most competitive economy in Sadc in 2017, one place higher than it had been at the start of the NDP4 period in 2012

The World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report is an annual assessment of the factors driving productivity and prosperity in 140 countries. Namibia fell by one place in the 2018 global competitiveness rankings, from 99th to 100th.

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