By:Nghiinomenwa-vali Erastus, Hertha Ekandjo
The know-how, time required, guidance, and who to approach have been cited by entrepreneurs as one of the reasons they are failing to access tailor-made capital.
With the African Continent Free Trade Area agreement negotiation making progress, local companies and startups need to ready themselves for competition and access to a bigger market.
In readying the country, the Namibia Trade Forum (NTF) will start assisting export-oriented enterprises and start-ups to apply for Development Bank of Namibia (DBN) finance to expand their operations and sell to the rest of the continent.
This follows the conclusion of a memorandum of understanding targeting export trade inked by the Namibia Trade Forum (NTF) and Development Bank of Namibia (DBN), a joint statement released yesterday said.
Through the MoU, NTFwill also assistance enterprises engaged in internal trade.
Ndiitah Nghipondoka-Robiati, deputy director for international trade and commerce in the ministry of industrialization,tradeand SME development, said at a time when Namibia and the African continent are working towards greater integration this MoU strengthens the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and allows Namibia to accelerate its industrialization agenda and diversify its export market
Nghipondoka-Robiatirepeated that SMEs are the backbone of most economies and are a key source of economic growth dynamism and flexibility.
Thus, SMEs must engage in programs that foster entrepreneurial thinking and enhance entrepreneurship.
She added that collaboration such as the NTF-DBN MoU, commitmentand consistency are the three factors that will enable SMEs to become highly independent and increase their survival rate.
Speaking at the signing event, DBN chief executive officer Martin Inkumbi said thatNamibia faces a paradox of a highly developed enterprise financing and support ecosystem yet inefficient enterprise formation.
Inkumbi explained that inefficiency is characterised by the substandard performance of new and existing enterprises, as well as their failure. The inefficiency is exacerbated by a lack of entrepreneurial skills, limited demand for local goods and services, and a lack of coordination in the enterprise financing and support ecosystem.
He said the MoU should be a model for coordination with the ability to assist finance for manufacturing, food processing, and agriculture infrastructure with the goal of local and continental trade.
Inkumbi also cautioned that although AfCFTA represents a potential boom for Namibian exporters, “it also opens Namibia to imports, and so it is important for Namibian SMEs and manufacturers to be competitive in both local and export markets”.
Stacey Pinto, NTF’s chief executive officer said that the collaboration is geared to strengthen applications by SMEfor DBN finance.
Pinto said NTF should be the first stop for SMEs intending to export goods or services to AfCTFA countries.
She indicated that apart from advice to strengthen DBN applications for those seeking capital, NTF will provide certain standards that will allow SMEs to compete in AfCFTA.
This includes elements such as packaging, labelling, barcodes, production capacity and quality assurance.
These elements, she emphasised, are the basis for SMEs to invest in products and services.
DBN’s head of SME Robert Eiman said that Namibia has sufficient products for international trade as the country can already offer anything that has to do with international trade.
“All the needed products and services needed to reach the international market are readily available,” he told The Villager in an interview on Tuesday.
Being a development financing institution, Eiman said that DBN does not mean that the bank does not collaborate with commercial banks when it comes to utilising solutions to aid its clients in foreign trade.
He added that the main aim is to help scale up SMEs in order for them to be able to export their products.
Looking at the continental free trade agreement and other agreements that are coming out on display, Eiman said that local SMEs will also need to gear themselves up and not only aim at supplying Namibians, but also getting their products out to other countries.
“The Namibia Trade Forum is assisting them with certain things to get them ready because we as the bank at the end of the day only provide financing and we do not prepare projects, we do not get markets for clients, neither do we do quality controls and quality checks or making sure that all agreements are in place,” he explained.
He said that the MoU between the bank and NTF is to assist export-oriented enterprises and start-ups to apply for DBN finance, and will greatly benefit those that are into manufacturing or processing businesses.
Namibia launched its AfCFTA Implementation Strategy and has kickoff various awareness creation programmes to get the private sector involvement and readiness.
The African continent is estimated to have consumers with a spending power of around US$3 trillion..
Email: erastus@thevillager.com.na
DBN, NTF Partner To Assist Export-Oriented Enterprises …”a paradox of a highly developed enterprise financing and support ecosystem yet inefficient enterprise formation”
