Venaani supports upper middle-income ranking

POPULAR Democratic Movement (PDM) leader McHenry Venaani says the government should stop discrediting the World Bank’s classification of Namibia as an upper middle-income country, and step up to develop the economy to fit this ranking.

Venaani said this when he challenged president Hage Geigob’s long-held position that the country does not qualify to be classified as an upper middle-income economy.

The president has over the years decried this ranking, saying it has prevented the country from accessing much-needed “soft loans” and grants to address its developmental challenges.

Geingob has specifically discredited the credibility of this ranking due to the fact that Namibia has one of the most unequal societies in the world.

However, during his contribution to the debate on the national budget in the National Assembly yesterday, Venaani said Geingob and the government’s position on this ranking is wrong and ill-thought-out.

The PDM leader said he and his party support this ranking because he does not want the country to depend on other countries for development aid.

“We disagree with the government’s position [on this]. African countries for too long have consistently become nations that live from the crumbs of other nations. The notion that Namibia should not be categorised as an upper middle-income country as a conduit for us to be recipients of cheap money from across the globe is wrong,” Venaani said.

According to him, Namibia should rather “create the necessary economic interventions to become a country that is free from an aid recipient” tag.

He added that the government should also focus on creating competitiveness at home across the economy and broaden the scope of the economy by “adding value to our commodities”.

Venaani yesterday also criticised the government on its inability to prioritise activities that could grow the economy in the current budget.

Overall, the PDM leader believes that this year’s budget is “uninspiring, as it sought to maintain the status quo rather than to get the economy out of the predicament it finds itself” in.

For example, Venaani said the allocation of N$125 million to the president’s office “to look for investment” was not well-thought out.

He said this allocation was made despite the government having hosted two failed international investment conferences over the past three years.

For Venaani, the government should have accounted for the money spent on those conferences before another commitment is made for this cause.

“The conferences were epic failures and that’s why we are giving another N$125 million. What are the results that we have accrued from those investment conferences? We have given you time and you have not delivered on what you have promised. The investment conference has not brought anything to the country,” he said.

The PDM leader further stressed that the continued neglect of the agriculture industry through the budget shows that the government has no other plan but to maintain the status quo.

“What are we doing to accelerate the grapes in the European markets? Your budget does not propel a thriving private sector. It does not incentivise the private sector…,” Venaani said.

Venaani’s fellow PDM member, Nico Smit, said the current budget does not solve any of the government’s recurrent problems “despite numerous promises since 2016”.

“The same problems that we faced after the spending honeymoon of 2012 to 2015 are all still there, unresolved and without any tangible solutions,” he said.

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