Hard copy still king in Namibia

NDAMA NAKASHOLEDespite the launch of the NamBizOne portal and the establishment of the Business and Intellectual Property Authority (BIPA), business registration remains cumbersome and time consuming. This is because new technologies are hardly applied in Namibia and businesspeople still have to drop hard copies of application and registration forms at various institutions instead of e-mailing soft copies including proof of payment to a one-window institution. These lines are part of this week’s commentary by the Economic Association of Namibia (EAN) following the release of the World Economic Forum (WEF)’s 2018 Global Competitiveness Report where Namibia is ranked 100th out of 140 countries, one rank down compared to 2017. Because of this, the EAN has suggested that more be done to improve ICT skills and access to fast ICT services that are vital for businesses to compete on a regional and global scale and to attract domestic and foreign direct investment.“New technologies, such as renewable energy sources, provide an opportunity to accelerate access to electricity and hence to ICT services, which will open new business opportunities,” said the association.Private investment in these sectors should therefore receive much stronger support, which would in turn reduce the reliance on public funds, it said.Some of Namibia’s weaknesses are relatively low-hanging fruits that have been discussed for quite some time and the EAN said they could be turned around in a short period of time, including the hiring of foreign labour, while others in the area of health and education in particular need longer-term, implementable strategies.“Overall, Namibia needs to introduce and embrace new technologies and the use thereof more aggressively,” the EAN said.Best performancesEloise du Plessis, PSG Namibia’s head of research, said one of the country’s best performances include the fact that Namibia ranked number one in the world for no incidence of terrorism.Namibia is also ranked 18th in the world for checks and balances, which is made up of the following factors: budget transparency (27th), judicial independence (27th), efficiency of legal framework in challenging regulations (24th) and freedom of the press (24th). “This makes for strong institutions in Namibia. It is notable, though, that our score decreased in all of the above areas from last year, so even though we are doing well at the moment, this can change if the slide continues,” she said.Du Plessis further mentioned property rights, where we the country ranks 31st in the world although the score also declined from last year. “Our roads are the 17th best in the world, with road connectivity in 10th place and the quality in 28th. One of the interesting factors where Namibia performs very well is the labour tax rate. This measures how much businesses need to pay out of their profits for labour taxes and social contributions. “Namibia is ranked 8th, which means that businesses do not have a high burden on their profits to pay for their employees’ taxes and social contributions,” she said.“Namibian loan books are also very strong, we are 19th in the world for having low non-performing , which means that our banks lend prudently.”Worst performancesThe measures where Namibia performed worst is in the ease of hiring foreign labour (136th), the time is takes to start a business (66 days puts us in 135th place), Du Plessis further said in her analysis.Namibia’s homicide rate is very high, putting the country 128th in the world. Namibia also does not have a competitive environment for telecommunication and postal services (127th).“The government is not good at use of online services to facilitate the provision of information to citizens, making our e-participation index 116th in the world,” said Du Plessis.Even though Namibia’s roads are great, airport connectivity is 119th, with the score dropping from last year. Namibia also has high inflation (111th place) and the life expectancy is low (116th). Overall standNamibia is the sixth most competitive economy in Sub-Saharan Africa behind Mauritius (49), South Africa (67), Seychelles (74), Botswana (90) and Kenya (93). Except for Seychelles that moved up 10 places compared to 2017, all these countries lost ground in competitiveness: South Africa (-5), Botswana (-5), Namibia (-1). There are no results for Mauritius and Kenya for 2017. Namibia is the ninth most competitive country on the African continent, since three North African countries are ranked better: Tunisia (87), Algeria (92) and Egypt (94). Namibia scored 52.7 out of 100 representing a slight improvement of 0.3 compared 2017. Seychelles improved the most in terms of the scores that went up from 55.2 to 58.5 resulting in a much better ranking, while Mauritius improved the score by 0.8 to 63.7. Botswana’s score dropped by 0.5 to 54.5 and South Africa’s by 0.1 to 60.8. Mozambique also lost ground in terms of scores – down by 2.1 to 39.8 – and ranking – down by eight ranks to place 133. All other African countries improved their scores. The decline in ranking for most of the African countries despite an improvement in the scores indicates that other countries improved faster resulting in the African countries being left behind. Namibia ranked best in the pillar ‘labour market’ (39), followed ‘financial system’ (47) and ‘institutions’ (51). However, the country is lagging behind in terms of ‘business dynamics’ and ‘market size’ (both 121), health (117) and ‘ICT adoption’ (105).

Hard copy still king in Namibia

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Republikein 2025-06-18

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Hard copy still king in Namibia

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