President Hage Geingob has challenged his Ministers to fully execute all projects under their portfolios, which are contained in the Fifth National Development Plan (NDP5) and Harambee Prosperity Plan II (HPPII).
“You must prioritize those projects and at the end of the day, come back and report 100 percent execution rate. It has been said that in Africa, we are good at planning and developing impressive policy documents, but when it comes to implementation things just don’t get done. This year we want an accelerated pace of implementation,” Geingob said during the opening of the first cabinet bi-annual performance review on Friday.
“I have assurances that the establishment of the Performance Delivery Unit (PDU) which is aimed at augmenting the Monitoring and Evaluation function within Government Offices, Ministries and Agencies will prove to be instrumental in our efforts to improve our rate of project execution.”
The President called for a review of bureaucratic processes in government which are impacting the implementation of government initiatives for prioritized sector such as agriculture, housing and education, which have been identified as for targeted intervention
“These priority sectors have been included and elevated in the HPPII under the Economic Advancement and Social Progression Pillars, respectively. We must, therefore, critically review our bureaucratic processes and expedite implementation of the identified key projects in these sectors. The line Ministers responsible for some of these sectors are expected to present during this Retreat, detailed project overviews and their plans including timelines, as to how they envisage speedy execution of these projects with catalytic economic impacts,” he said.
“We should come up with clearly articulated plans of action for the Green Schemes including Neckartal Dam, expedited land delivery for housing and the desalination plant to address the water shortages in the Erongo regions.”
The President said although the country had attracted international interest for the development of the country’s green hydrogen, an initiative which is being spearheaded under Namibia’s Southern Corridor Development Initiative, implementation and execution of the projects was still key in ensuring the desired outcome for the country.
“We are making good progress on the Southern Corridor Development Initiative, spurred on by global interest in developing Green hydrogen and its derivatives in the area. However, at this critical stage, meticulous planning, stakeholder engagement and execution is key to fully unlocking this transformational opportunity, as envisioned.
“Given the prevailing economic circumstances, with the outlook only indicating subdued growth, a business-as-usual approach will not be able to bring about decisive change. Thus, we are all challenged to think out of the box, to formulate new ideas and approaches to unlock the projects we have prioritized,” he said.
The green hydrogen initiative is expected to generate close to N$4 billion in revenues per annum once full production capacity is reached, with 15,000 direct jobs to be created during construction and 3,000 during operation.
Namibia is also set to receive N$100 million in concession fees from Hyphen Hydrogen Energy, its preferred hydrogen bidder this year.
