The future of the Namibia Investment Promotion and Development Board (NIPDB) is under review, with the possibility that the institution may be disbanded or restructured. This is according to a report from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR).
Before any changes are made, the report states policymakers must first ask a deeper question, namely does Namibia need a body like the NIPDB?
The NIPDB was created to attract investment to the country. According to the IPPR, the entity has helped raise Namibia’s profile internationally. However, the report warns that investment promotion only works if the product being promoted meets investor expectations.
“When investors look more closely, they may find the reality does not match the image,” the IPPR report states. “It points to unclear laws, complicated rules, and local ownership requirements that are not always made clear in promotional materials”.
“There are too many bureaucratic delays. No amount of good marketing can sell a product that has serious problems,” the report adds.
While many countries have agencies like the NIPDB, the report questions whether they are truly needed. If rules and systems were clear and simple, investors would just follow the steps and invest without needing help.
However, the more confusing and difficult it is to invest in a country, the more necessary it becomes to have a body like the NIPDB to guide investors.
The IPPR report notes that the worse the investment climate is, the more important a body like the NIPDB becomes.
The late President Hage Geingob announced the creation of NIPDB in March 2020 and mandated the new body “to promote a conducive business environment and market Namibia as a favourable investment destination”.
The hope of many observers at the time was that the new body would inject new life into investment promotion after years during which the sleepy Namibian Investment Centre (NIC) in the Ministry of Industrialisation and Trade had done a half-hearted job of promoting Namibia abroad.
The stated mandate gave cause for further optimism because it seemed to suggest the new body would have the power not only to market Namibia abroad, but to improve the investment environment.
New Era newspaper reached out to NIPDB for a response on the IPPR report, but and they referred the publication to the Ministry of International Relations and Trade. In response a ministry spokesperson sent a screenshot from the NIPDB Facebook page stating: “President Netumbo Nandi Nandi-Ndaitwah announced that NIPDB will henceforth resort under the Ministry of International Relations and Trade. The NIPDB welcomes this strategic alignment, which is part of the government’s economic development agenda and to enhance coordination across key institutions that drive investment, trade and inclusive growth.”