WINDHOEK - A dedicated and specialised commercial court under the High Court will be established early April next year, the Deputy Permanent Secretary in the Office of the Judiciary, Tousy Namiseb, announced last week.

Namiseb said the court will be operating from the Office of the Judiciary, located at the former Swabou building in Windhoek West.  He announced this at a media briefing last week, where his fellow officials also touched on various issues pertaining to the judiciary. 

“In terms of further access to justice, we are looking at streamlining High Court trials. There are specified cases, for example civil cases that are more of commercial nature. We are pulling that out and working towards establishing a commercial court,” Namiseb said.

Namiseb further stated that they have space at the Office of the Judiciary, and they are renovating and adjusting a room into a court room.

“We will have dedicated judges, which will contribute to speedier [conclusion] of this cases… we are looking at starting with the first cases on April 2, 2019, that is the deadline we have given ourselves,” Namiseb told New Era.

Namiseb explained that in terms of the commercial court, it is about the competitiveness and to contribute to the economic growth of the country. “If you look at international ranking, some of the ranking such as the Mo Ibrahim on the rule of law, Namibia is doing extremely well on the rankings on the African continent. But, if you look at the ranking for which the World Bank is doing time to time on, for example doing business, we are doing well but we want to improve on that ranking,” he said.

He added that it becomes important that they create a separate stream for commercial cases,  and that they decided and benchmarked against other jurisdictions, such as that of the United Kingdom, which has different streams of courts.
Namiseb said the commercial court will be based in Windhoek in the meantime, although there are long term plans to expand to other regions in the future.