Steven Klukowski
WINDHOEK – With no end in sight for the current economic downturn, many small businesses, especially those surviving on government procurement contracts, say they will put their faith in both God and government to carry them through the year.
The owner of Age Corporate Solutions cc who preferred to be anonymous sounded optimistic when speaking to New Era yesterday, saying: “With God’s grace, it can be a good year for the procurement industry.”
She is keeping her fingers crossed as she awaits the awarding of a big government supply and delivery tender this year, which can carry her through for some months.
“The timeframe for receiving payments from government for services rendered are also not so bad since I am still able to keep my head above the water,” she said.
According to her, one of the biggest challenges one faces regarding tenders is that tenders are sometimes cancelled at eleventh hour, which makes planning difficult.
“We as company owners puts a lot of effort, time and resources in preparing a bid document, only to be informed of the cancellation of such tender at last minute, which at times is a bit discouraging,” she observed. In addition to this, she felt that transparency and avoidance of corruption are of great importance during the execution of procurement processes since “this can lead to a fair and harmonious outcome at the end”.
She concluded that more emphasis should rather be placed on the prices and quality of services offered by tenderpreneurs in the awarding of tenders.
Speaking to New Era, Wiseman Anyala, owner of Wiseman Anyala Holding Group cc, felt that the status quo in the procurement process will remain the same as it was in 2018.
“There are no new projects currently to be implemented by government, which may lead to more job losses within the procurement sector, unless the previous projcets are still continuing this year,” Anyala opined.
He fears that it will be difficult for the domestic industry to grow this year since Namibia is more of a consuming than manufacturing country.
He however believes that since this is election year, government may try its best to improve the economic situation in the country.
Anyala in addition felt that it has become extremely difficult to survive in the prevailing economic climate, citing that he cannot employ anybody at this stage due to a lack of resources.
“There are a lot of opportunities in Namibia, like setting up a factory, but this requires funding in terms of the acqusuition of land, buying equipment, bringing in expert technical staff and so forth.”
He feels that government should improve its partnership with the private sector in order to come up with modalities on how to best find ways to improve on the current economic situation prevailing in Namibia.
The Bank of Namibia said in its recent economic outlook report that despite economic challenges, they expected the economy to recover to a positive growth rate of 1.5 percent in 2019 from a contraction of 0.2 percent in 2018.
Emma Haiyambo, the bank’s director of strategic communications and financial sector development, furthermore said the Namibia economy is was predicted to grow by 0.6 percent in 2018, before growing further by 1.9 percent this year.