Realignment bears fruit

Realignment bears fruit NAMPA

The steps Namibia has taken to realign funds from non-priority to priority areas are showing positive results, minister of finance Calle Schlettwein said on Tuesday.

“As a responsible government, we used our mid-year budget review to react and realign our availability resources. The consequence was a painful, but responsible one,” he said during the Harambee Prosperity Plan (HPP) year-end performance review by President Hage Geingob at State House.

During the mid-term budget review in October, the minister developed a strategy to increase and decrease certain allocations to meet the financial requirements of the state during the remainder of the 2016/17 financial year that ends in March 2017.

Schlettwein on Tuesday said the government had managed to reduce expenditure by N$4.5 billion and allocated N$1 billion to priority projects to maintain growth in the economy and compensate for loss in income.

“The budget for this year is funded to honour our commitment to maintain macroeconomic stability and maintain investment credit rating. The steps we have taken to cut expenditure are showing positive results as we could maintain our credit rating,” he said.

Fitch Ratings in September revised the outlook on Namibia''s economy from stable to negative. Another credit rating agency, Moody’s, did the same in December based on the country’s poor policies to reduce its deficit and accumulated public debt.

The Fitch rating, Schlettwein said, warned the country to focus more on improving its fiscal and monetary position, and the living standards of all Namibians.

“I am happy that in the negative economic climate that we are living in now, we managed as a small economy to maintain our ratings. We are going through a difficult time now, but we are fully funded and the liquidity situation is under control,” Schlettwein said.

President Hage Geingob on Tuesday delivered a post-mortem on progress made in the HPP between April and September 2016 to cabinet ministers and members of the media.

The HPP is the government’s development plan that focuses on poverty alleviation, wealth redistribution and Namibia’s industrialisation.

Launching the plan of action in April this year, Geingob declared 2016 the year of implementation with inclusivity for all Namibians.