The economy must show continuous growth

The economy needs to show strong and continuous growth in order for government's revenue to increase and for debt levels to come down to sustainable levels, economist at FNB Namibia, Ruusa Nandago said.

In a media statement on Friday, Nandago said once this happens, funds can be diverted to activities that can help the economy grow and the 2020 Mid-Year Reveiw budget speech therefore emphasised the need for policy interventions to help the economy recover.

“Because expenditure has increased this year, while revenue has fallen, the fiscal deficit or the budget deficit is expected to come in at 10.1% of GDP. This is quite high by historical standards when compared to last year, for example, when the budget deficit was 4.1% of GDP,” she said. In a separate statement also issued on Friday, FNB's Head of SME, Sam Ikela said that post-Covid-19 business success is not about navigating the new normal, it's about defining it as an impact of months of lockdown regulations during first months of 2020, which is a challenge for SMEs.

“ The world had never faced a situation quite like this, and given the significant dependence of businesses on data for strategy development and decision making, most companies found themselves having to 'shoot from the hip', given that there was now a structural break in their data flows, and they had no access to any particularly relevant customer, industry or economic data to analyse and inform their decisions,” Ikela said. - Nampa