By Dylan Mukoroli
As of late, the administration has been ramping up efforts for Government and its entities to realise their full potential.
SOEs has been the subject of many treasury bail outs and support over the fiscal years with little to no strategic oversight.
Now seemingly, with this administration, there will be a need to vehemently account and bring forth productive outcomes.
Equally, this administration is placing a big bet on mining and agriculture, two sectors that have proven time again then when they operate in a conducive environment, they have the opportunity to prop up GRN revenue.
In this opinion piece, I outline what strategic intervention and moves the administration is making for GRN to better account for on its high expenditure on SOEs, its moves to strengthen procurement and head in the direction of productive outcomes, and finally why GRNs optimistic bet on SOEs must be intensified.
Lets attempt to make the case for government in business, generally, there are those that feel GRN should play a more active role and yet those that feel that GRN should be less intrusive in the economy if we are to resolve our challenges.
This topic draws me back to when the late H.E Dr Hage Geingob, during his tenure as Right Honourable Prime Minister, once made a hawkish remark during one event on the eve of a just released budget statement where the economy recorded good economic growth and made good revenue, the remark was whether this would have been possible if Government had not stepped in with several policy, fiscal and procurement interventions to bolster the status quo.
What a moment it must have been, Unfortunately, we were very young that time and was debating who was better between the Dogg and Gazza.
We learn from the work of Dr. Gaby Magomola who has made a strong case for Governments intervention in South Africa’s economy.
Dr. Magomola makes beautiful relational mention of classical theory pioneers such as Jean Baptiste, John Mill and Adam Smith who in their own spaces pioneered one or other theory on economics, economic growth, supply demand, link between population growth and economic growth and economies of scale.
It is important to mention that these theories came at a time when capitalism was in its peak and there was an overall rejection of Government in business.
Moreso and very relateable to Namibia, the keynesian theory played a great part in the establishment of the South African Reserve Bank in the 1920s and its very strong interventionist approach and its workings of the Common Monetary Area (The then Rand Monetary Area) of which today guides much of our policy stances. Enough with the history lesson, now on to why we are here.
I stand in full support that GRN must have a role to play by way of intervention and through SOEs. The economy cannot simply be left in the hands of private sector, of which they rarely have any social responsibility other than CSI.
SOEs, which facilitate productive outcomes are important in the sense that GRN gets a piece of the pie. We have also seen instances where GRN can simply not get it right with SOEs, and this technically is where private sector usually comes in and fills the gap.
Chairperson of the Social Research Foundation & Scenario planner, Dr. Frans Cronje recently drew strong distinction, that the private sector always comes into the fray where government ended up failing and tends to provide that service.
Air Namibia is one such case, to keep Namibia’s aviation sector afloat, private sector came in and took over the space. Fortunately or unfortunarely, even without consensus, private sector preys on Government weakness.
It now should be a clarion call for SOEs to take Her Excellency’s words to task and engage on where the low hanging fruit are, what are the issues where executive muscle can be used to bulldoze and work in results. It indeed simply cannot be business as usual.
To the benefit of all, this approach seeks to share resources, responsibility and synergies between the state and private sector, and effectively optimise on the strengths that both parties bring to the table, while vehemently holding each other accountable. To overcome the burden of inefficiencies, SOEs have been created to extend the governments ability to deliver services.
Throughought all administrations, interventions has been largely made to social sectors, through social grants, drought relief, social support . even though; GDP has increased from about N$ 7 billion in 1990 to about N$260 billion in 2025/26; the economy is still far from solving the unemployment, inequality and poverty challenges. GRN cannot still at this point and juncture, pump in billions in SOEs that have absolutely zero productive outcomes.
Encouragingly, SOEs command billions in non-banking assets and those assets must start getting to work. Gudos to our intentional Minister of Finance, Hon. Shafudah, who will seek to introduce a more streamlined procurement framework that will give SOEs breathing space.
In my final analysis, a lot is riding on our SOEs ability to come to the front and do what is required of them. Structurally, they must have plans that produce productive outcomes, not to overplan and promise and ensure every penny is used to its mandate.
Dylan Mukoroli is passionate about sustainable community development and development finance.
