State-owned enterprises are not meant to make a profit – prime minister 

Prime minister Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila says state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are not there to make a profit but to implement targeted government interventions.

Kuugongelwa-Amadhila spoke to all executive directors of offices, ministries and agencies during their first their engagement of the year in Windhoek on Friday.

“The government did not set up public enterprises to make a profit from them,” she said. The prime minister said SOEs were set up to implement strategic interventions of the government as outlined in government policies.

“This means, therefore, that although there is a ministry for public enterprises that deals with the business aspect of these public enterprises, we as line ministries must coordinate to ensure that we indeed utilise these institutions as agencies for implementation of sectoral policies of government,” she said.

The Public Entreprises Governance Act says a commercial public enterprise provides a product or renders a service and is capable of making a sustained profit and “does not perform a regulatory function or administer a fund in the public interest”.

Public enterprises are divided into commercial and non-commercial enterprises, as per the act.

These include Meat Corporation of Namibia, the Lüderitz Waterfront Company, Roads Constractor Company as well as Telecom.