‘Namibia is flying blind’

Jo-Maré Duddy – Government is prepared to spend about N$224.4 million on travel and subsistence allowances (S&T) in the new budget year – nearly N$63 million or 40% more than in the current one – but doesn’t have money to conduct a crucial strategy guide like the population and housing census this year.“The postponement of the census means that we continue to make policy while blind,” Cirrus Capital economist Robert McGregor said.The statistician general and CEO of the Namibia Statistics Agency (NSA), Alex Shimuafeni, in a press release late Tuesday afternoon announced the latest postponement.The 2021 Population and Housing Census (PHC) will not take place in August this year because no budget provision was made “due to financial constraints and other critical national priorities”, Shimuafeni said.This is the second time the PHC was postponed. It was scheduled for last year, but was delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic and a lack of money. In January this year, the NSA said the census will take place this August.Shimuafeni on Tuesday didn’t provide a new date for the census. The media will be notified once the National Planning Commission (NPC) informs the NSA, he said. The NPC funds the NSA. ‘SHOCKING’ Namibia’s last PHC was in 2011. The census is supposed to be conducted every ten years. The document contains critical sosio-economic data like the population composition, education and literacy, housing conditions, sanitation and labour.“The further delay in the census is incredibly disappointing,” McGregor said.Simonis Storm (SS) economist Theo Klein reacted: “This is really bad.”According to McGregor, it is “shocking” that government didn’t provide for the census. As a scheduled exercise every decade, the expenditure was not an unexpected event.“The lack of provision for it in the national budget is simply unacceptable,” he said. Political scientist, managing director of Survey Warehouse and compiler of the Afrobarometer for Namibia, Christie Keulder, said a new census will be to the benefit of both government and the private sector.“Given that our data is now so old, how will we measure the true impak of the Covid-19 pandemic in terms of job losses, income losses, ect? Given the rapid pace of urbanisation, how are we going to plan for housing, basic service delivery, schools, ect?”Klein agreed: “We are all thumb-sucking unemployment figures. How do you target public spending without having proper statistics on your population?”The census postponement affects every level of government, Keulder said: central, regional and local.Symbolically, the shelving of the census is a clear low point, he said. “The economy has reach the point where government can’t even count the people in the country.”‘NOT A PRIORITY’The recurrent delays in the census show that updated data is clearly not a priority, despite the importance of this for all policy, according to McGregor. “At this stage one begins to wonder if this data is clearly not a priority. Is it the case that government truly cannot afford the (expected) expenditure, or do we rather prefer not having hard data to show how far the situation has truly deteriorated since the last surveys were conducted? “Surveys since around 2015/16, including the 2016 Inter-censal Demographic Survey, showed that Namibia had started regressing on many socio-economic indicators. These would definitely have worsened with the economic deterioration from 2016-2019, and more so with the economic deterioration thereafter,” he said.McGregor added: “Essentially, is it politically expedient to have updated/recent data? And frankly, I don't think it is. Does it help for policy? Yes. But for electoral support? No.” CASH STRAPPEDThe budget expenditure ceiling for 2022/23 was revised up by N$2.6 billion from the 2021 mid-year estimates, while revenue for 2022/23 was revised upwards by N$5.8 billion from the last mid-year estimates, McGregor said. Expenditure over the medium-term expenditure framework (MTEF) has also been revised upwards, as have the deficits, he added. “If the cost of the survey is a concern, there are ways to reduce this,” McGregor said.According to budget documents tabled by finance minister Iipumbu Shiimi last week, the NSA’s allocation for 2022/23 is nearly N$94.4 million. In his main budget tabled last year, Shiimi planned to give the NSA nearly N$96.4 million in 2022/23.In 2020, Shimuafeni told the media that N$1.1 billion was initially budgeted for the entire census process from 2017 to 2025. That was cut to N$950 million and again to N$606 million.Government, however, indicated that it would only provide N$500 million. At a fund-raising event in the beginning of 2021, pledges of N$40 million were received.

‘Namibia is flying blind’

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Namibian Sun 2025-07-01

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‘Namibia is flying blind’

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Namibian Sun 2025-07-01

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