The Development Bank of Namibia (DBN) through its Covid-19 Business Relief Loan provided N$53 million in funding to The Gondwana Collection to pay employees’ salaries, preserving approximately 950 jobs.
The DBN availed the funding after the hospitality group had implemented various cost cutting measures at the height of the Delta phase of Covid-19 infections, to preserve its workforce and their income by tightening work schedules, implementing overtime restrictions, leave schedules and operating with skeleton staff where possible, with management taking salary cuts.
The beneficiary employees of the hospitality company are distributed among 28 accommodation establishments and companies that make up the group.
“DBN is doing everything in its power to preserve the industry for the future. This includes a moratorium on repayments for existing Bank customers in the tourism and hospitality sector, restructuring of loans and extending the Covid-19 Business Relief Loans to new customers,” DBN Executive for Marketing and Corporate Communication, Jerome Mutumba said.
“The investments that the Bank is making in the sector, through its loans, recognize the historic contribution of tourism to the Namibian economy but, more importantly, the need to preserve capacity for the future.”
Mutumba said the DBN assesses its loans with long-term results in mind, by considering the sustainability of its investments.
“Be it a smaller enterprise or a large enterprise, projects financed by DBN are expected to be sustainable well beyond the term of the finance,” he said.
He,however, called for further development of other sectors in the country, a development which Mutumba said can shed reliance on a few highly productive sectors.
“Although tourism and hospitality must be preserved, manufacturing and transport and logistics must be further developed. Not only will this make Namibia more economically self-sufficient, but it will also improve the attractiveness of Brand Namibia for foreign direct investment in future,” Mutumba said.
Namibia’s tourism sector is expected to recover this year on the back of very positive current and future bookings.
The Development Bank’s Covid-19 Business Relief Loan is supported by capitalization from the Development Bank of Germany, KFW.
