20100917
africanews

The Namibian government has taken a hard-line stance to diversify the economy in a bid to move away from the overreliance in the mining sector the country's Finance Minister told Africa News.

Minister, Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila said the country needs to continue diversifying its economic base to move away from heavy reliance on the commodity market through the inclusion of the service industry.

“We have admitted for a long time that we need to cut down on the reliance on commodity contribution to the Gross Domestic Product.

This follows the recent ratings by the Global Economic Forum indicating that Namibian economy has remained stagnant with both the education and health sector plunging in performance.

“We are moving towards the participation of the service, financial and manufacturing sectors to the economy,” said Kuugongelwa-Amadhila

Kuugongelwa-Amadhila said Namibia has made significant strides in broadening the economic base of the country from a commodity-based one to a service-based economy and more needs to be done to improve contribution by all economic sectors.

Minister Kuugongelwa-Amadhila said the Government concurs with recommendations that the economy has relied heavily on the mining sector hence limiting the contributions of other sectors to the Gross Domestic Policy.

“Even though I have not taken a look at the GEF report, I think we have always talked about the country’s heavy reliance on commodities to drive the economy. I think we must also acknowledge that Government has made significant inroads in encouraging participation of all sectors in the economy since independence,” said Kuugongelwa-Amadhila.

She added that although Government makes significant investments into the health and education sectors, the quality of service delivery has not moved commensurate to the level of investment made.

“We are making frantic efforts since last year to improve economic performance and our local figures show that we have been slowly improving. Skills shortage remains a limiting factor in the development of this economy. Although a lot of money is available in education we still need to make efforts in improving the quality of the educational graduates.

Kuugongelwa-Amadhila added that the country is also positioning itself into a transport hub for its land locked neighbours in a bid to broaden the economic base of the country.

“Despite the contributions from the Government as a partner in the economy and the service and financial sector we can also position ourselves as the transport link by providing port services for other countries in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) that do not have access to the ocean,” said Kuugongelwa- Amadhila.

The Finance Minister’s sentiments come at the back of the recent ratings by the Global Economic Forum which show that the Namibian economy has not improved its ranking of 74 against other global economies.

However, the country continues to perform well in the sub-Saharan region and the African continent scoring higher compared to other countries.