By Anna Shilongo
WINDHOEK
The President of the Namibian Employers’ Federation (NEF), Vekuii Rukoro, has expressed disappointment with Namibia’s continued drop in competitiveness rankings – both internationally and regionally.
According to the latest report on competitiveness, Namibia has slipped for the third consecutive year.
“According to the perception of business people, both locally and overseas, there are things we, as a nation, are no longer doing correctly to position Namibia as a well-regulated conducive environment for investment and doing business,” said Rukoro.
He strongly believes there is a need for the Government to improve on where it went wrong.
Some of the things that the Government promises to address every year, but fails to meet, include the unacceptable delays in the processing of work and residence permits for foreign investors who wish to follow their investments given the continued lack of certain critical skills in the Namibian market, he said. Rukoro was further not satisfied by the fact that it still takes two to six months for a business executive or a university professor to be cleared to come and teach in the country.
A related issue he outlined is the low productivity of the country’s economy compared to others in the region, as a result of employment regulations and the recent increase in leave days which makes Namibia totally uncompetitive with the rest of SADC.
While President Hifikepunye Pohamba exhorts the nation to work harder, Rukoro said the Ministry of Labour introduces legislation that compels the nation to work less and rest more. He argued that such barriers are the harsh realities that Namibians need to wake up to if they are serious about National Vision 2030.
“The vision calls for concrete action now, not tomorrow, with measurable results not political rhetoric,” said Rukoro.
He said the vision further calls for concrete efforts between the Government, the private sector, organised labour and the community at large in the implementation of sectoral programmes and projects with a feedback-loop to track, evaluate and measure performance by a joint public-private agency.
“Anything short of this is self-delusion as Vision 2030 will become vision impossible,” stressed Rukoro.
He was, however confident that the country still has 23 years to go before Vision 2030, calling on the nation to resolve and correct the mistakes of the past and the present by thinking both short-term and long-term.
He also appealed to stakeholders to create and maintain a conducive environment for investment in the country.