Africa-Press – Namibia. THE national budget tabled for the 2022/23 financial year is ‘nothing new or exciting’ and contradicts its theme of ‘Reimaging, a Better Future for the Youth’.
This is according to labour expert Herbert Jauch, who gave his analysis of the budget on Desert Radio 95.3 FM on Friday. “It’s hardly anything new. It’s almost a repeat of what we have had all the time,” he said.
“The spicing up of the youth focus, bringing young people into parliament, and the soccer sponsorship is all fine. The minister also mentioned some youth interventions . . . public procurement for youth, support for development to support youth in business, infrastructure extension at the vocational training centres . . . but when you look at them it’s almost like a drop in the ocean.
“The amounts spent on all these youth interventions is just a small part,” he said. Jauch said while the focus on young people is long overdue, the budget remains a “status quo budget”. The budget is worrying, because it doesn’t address poverty and growing unemployment in the country, he said.
He also took issue with the ballooning debt and high spending on ministries related to security, such as the Ministry of Home Affairs, Immigration, Safety and Security and the Ministry of Defence and Veterans Affairs.
The public safety and order sector received the third-largest share of the budget at 17,8%. Jauch said as about 15% of the budget (approximately N$9,2billion) goes towards debt servicing, the country finds itself in a cycle in which the money available to address burning social issues becomes less.
“It is quite shocking that despite all these austerity measures, we haven’t even controlled that. The question is: What are we addressing?” he asked.
Jauch pointed out that while minister of finance Iipumbu Shiimi said he consulted with the youth, the budget did not seem to offer much opportunity to reignite growth.
“From the budget speech, there was no specific intervention mentioned.
“The government should have set up youth-driven interventions to run a good many years for the youth to be directly afforded a way to get into economic activity in a significant way,” he said. Jauch said while the government was able to identify the specific problems plaguing young people and society, the budget and interventions do not address them.
“It almost looks like we will just continue with business as usual without having the courage to cut down the budget deficit.
“In my view it would’ve required redressing extraordinary luxury expenditure. The wastage of the past is adding up, and that is tragic for the youth,” he said.
SAFETY AND DEFENCE SPENDING CONTRADICTORY Jauch said the increased budget for the safety and security and defence ministries demonstrated a contradiction in the supposed youth-centred budget.
“These are definitely not the areas that would benefit the youth. And it’s almost saying we cannot address the social issues, so therefore we must beef up safety and security,” he said.
According to Jauch, this indicates that the government would much rather deal with the internal safety and security instability that would arise from growing social issues.
“When people are poor, unemployed and with no chance of making a living, you have rising crime rates,” he said.
Jauch said the biggest internal safety and security issue the country is currently faced with is inequality and poverty, which the national budget fails to address.
“It speaks to priorities. When you cut everything else but increase that [safety and defence], that is a political statement,” he said.
For More News And Analysis About Namibia Follow Africa-Press
