Despite prevailing economic headwinds, the ministry of industrialisation and trade’s annual budget allocation was increased by 22% or N$31 million to almost N$298 million when finance minister Iipumbu Shiimi tabled the national budget in February this year under the theme ‘Economic Revival and Caring for the Poor’.
Of the allocated budget, some N$243 million is earmarked for the operational budget, while N$54 million is set aside for the development budget.
According to the trade and industrialisation minister, Lucia Iipumbu, the increased budgetary allocation will enable the ministry to contribute towards Namibia’s economic development.
“This budget provides us with an opportunity to revive some of the ministerial activities that were put on hold due to economic challenges perpetrated by the Covid-19 pandemic since end of 2019 to date, and followed by the Russia-Ukraine war, which has sent economic shock in the macro-economic activities across the globe, such as the high inflation rate in goods and services,” said Iipumbu when motivating the ministerial budget in the National Assembly.
The trade minister added, “We need to forge a greater spirit of ‘Namibia First’ to accelerate the economic recovery and growth, which is the greatest challenge we are facing as a government”.
According to Iipumbu, the 2023/2024 budget is a catalyst to revive key sectors of the domestic economy for sustainable development. Thus, she said, the budget serves as an important instrument for ensuring the country’s economic recovery initiatives are well coordinated.
Meanwhile, during her budget motivation, Iipumbu broke down the operational budget to show that N$83 137 000 is reserved for personnel expenditure, N$57 738 000 is set aside for goods and other services, while N$102 681 000 is budgeted for subsidies and other current transfers.
Iipumbu further detailed a number of the ministry’s programmes and their respective budgets. They include the Trade Promotion programme (N$138 784 627), the Industrial Development programme (N$61 214 461), investment promotion (N$4 151 049), the Special Industrialisation programme (N$26 234 769) and policy supervision and support services (N$67 171 094).
Meanwhile, the public enterprises that fall under the trade ministry will receive numerous allocations. They include the Business Intellectual Property Authority, which will receive N$1 million, the Namibia Competition Commission (NaCC) will receive N$24 million, the Namibia Estate Agency Board: N$1.6 million, the Namibia Standard Institute (NSI) will receive N$31 735 000, the Namibia Trade Forum (N$2 million) and the Namibia Chamber of Commerce has been allocated N$500 000.