Domestic resources for development financing in Namibia: Constraints and opportunities

To translate Vision 2030 into reality, the government prepares National Development Plans (NDPs), which outline the programmes and projects that the country intends to pursue over successive five-year periods. The current NDP, the fourth in the series, has adopted three over-arching goals: economic growth, employment creation and reducing income inequality. To realise these development objectives, the country needs to enhance the mobilisation of domestic resources. The Government of the Republic of Namibia (GRN) recognises the need for enhanced revenue mobilisation and has stated thus “the imperative to fund critical national priority needs calls on government to strengthen revenue mobilization strategies and increasingly harness measures to improve internal efficiency, reduce waste and realize internal savings as important facets for public finance management in the medium-term” (Ministry of Finance, 2013). This paper analyses past trends in domestic resource mobilisation in Namibia, to identify its pace and its constraints for funding development projects. The main objective of the study is to identify fiscal space which can be used to finance national development in Namibia and to propose policy options for enhancing domestic resource mobilisation.