Our detailed budget paper is coming soon, but we held a presentation today outlining some key points from the analysis.
The presentation was done by Rowland Brown, an IPPR Research Associate, and was followed by Minister of Finance Calle Schlettwein, who replied to the presentation and answered audience questions.
Brown highlighted that the budget was much improved from the past – both in its contents and in the way it was delivered. He welcomed several cuts, and noted that the problems of debt had been acknowledged by government. However, the civil service wage bill and defence spending – among others – still need to be addressed. Brown was also concerned that government’s estimates on debt reductions are too optimistic.
Meanwhile Minister Schlettwein agreed that government had to be more efficient in terms of spending, but emphasised that it has an important role to play in fighting poverty. He also commented on the fact that South Africa had been downgraded by a ratings agency, and talked about whether Namibia would be downgraded. He noted that South Africa’s downgrade was based on political instability, which is a strong point of Namibia’s. In addition, the new budget addresses many concerns raised by ratings agencies.
We summarised a lot of the presentation on our twitter account, and under the twitter hashtag #NamBudget2017.Check out our timeline for the all of the tweets.
In particular, we did a thread on salary spend:
Let's talk salaries. 1. Personnel expenditures and Good and Services (basics for running office) easily make for 50% of spending. pic.twitter.com/dEblypAlTR
— IPPR Namibia (@ipprnamibia) April 6, 2017
and one on specific spending items that seem excessive:
1. New numbered thread on specific examples from the #NamBudget2017
— IPPR Namibia (@ipprnamibia) April 6, 2017
Click on those tweets to see the whole threads, or click here for the presentation slides. We will soon upload a full briefing paper with more details.
