WINDHOEK
Namibia’s Ministry of Mines and Energy scored the lowest execution rate for the 2014/2015 financial year as it could only implement 41 percent of its allocated budget, due to the fact that N$500 million set aside for the Kudu Gas Project was suspended and later disapproved, while a further amount exceeding N$4 million was also suspended.
This means the ministry could only execute about N$354 million of its allocated N$869 million budget, while the rest went back to Treasury. In retrospect, the mining sector contributed N$23 billion to export earnings, 13 percent to GDP and N$1.4 billion was collected in total for royalty payments. Rössing Uranium Limited declared a total of N$3.9 million dividends to the State Account, while three new mines were constructed during 2016, which were the B2Gold Mine to produce gold, the Tschudi Mine to produce copper cathode and Swakop Uranium Mine to produce uranium oxide. However, some capital projects proved a challenge for the Ministry of Mines, such as the finalisation of the Khorixas Small Scale Miner project, which could not be finalised due to delays as the appointed building contractor was said to not have adhered to project timelines. Epangelo Mining Company did not get adequate funds to acquire meaningful equity in existing mining projects, according to the government’s Accountability Report for the 2014/2015 financial year, while fluctuations in mineral commodity prices, coupled with a sharp depreciation in the Namibian dollar against major trading currencies affected mineral revenue estimates. There was also inadequate generation of capacity in Namibia, with 70 percent of power imports coming from the SADC region. Other government ministries and institutions that also spent below the 98.3 percent budget implementation threshold at the aggregate level were the Anti-Corruption Commission at 72.8 percent, the National Council at 87.7 percent and the National Assembly at 85.3 percent.
The Ministry of Urban and Rural Development (formerly the Ministry of Regional and Local Government and Housing) had a budget execution rate of 99.75 percent for the 2014/2015 financial year, which represents an improvement from the 2013/2014 financial year when it returned close to N$300 million to Treasury as implementation of capital projects proved a challenge that year.
Statistics show that the housing ministry spent only 85.1 percent (N$1.6 billion) of the N$1.9 billion it was allocated during the 2013/14 fiscal year. The government’s Accountability Report provides a summary of government’s achievements and milestones and how it performed against appropriate budgets for the year under review. Overall, there was marked improvement in the implementation rate of allocated public expenditure, as the implementation rate of the development budget rose from 92.9 percent to 95.4 percent. The report also revealed that three out of 31 Namibian government offices, ministries and agencies overspent on their budgets in the 2014/2015 financial year. The four government offices, ministries and agencies that overspent were the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Gender Equality and Child Welfare, the Department of Police and the Ministry of Health and Social Services.
Despite the achievements and marked improvements in the implementation rate of the budget, the Namibian economy and the progress of some programmes encountered persistent challenges, which included continued high unemployment, income inequality, core skills shortage, less than forecasted revenue collection and widespread poverty. – Southern Times