Desie Heita
12 June 2008
Windhoek — TransNamib has invited Swedish companies to partner the State-owned transport company in its US$1 billion refurbishment exercise that would poise it to compete on an equal footing with the world's transporters.
Newly appointed Chief Executive Officer for Trans-Namib, Titus Haimbili, said the parastatal needs to upgrade its infrastructure to handle 18,5 tonnes axle load at 80 km per hour, from the current 40 km per hour, at a cost of US$564 million in new railroads. It also needs to invest US$15 million in the refurbishment of 30 locomotives within the next three years and to purchase 10 new locomotives at an estimated cost of US$17 million.
The total estimated cost for the revamping of infrastructure, establishing and constructing new railroads, new coaches for passengers and wagons, comes to around US$1044 billion.
"I think this is where [our] Swedish partners could come in, either through Foreign Direct Investments or through Public Private Partnership participation," said Haimbili when he addressed a Swedish business meeting in Stockholm on Monday.
Swedish companies would not have problems entering such business ventures with Namibia, especially that the Swedish Export Credit Board (EKN) ranks Namibia among the top five Southern African countries with whom Swedish companies could do business with at lesser risk.
The Export Credit Board provides credit guarantees to Swedish companies that wish to do business with Namibia and conducts credit ratings on specific companies with whom Swedish companies wish to trade.
"The only negative points for Namibia are the high levels of unemployment. Otherwise, political stability, good governance, democracy, establishment of relevant institutions and infrastructure count favourably for Namibia," said Freddy !Gaoseb, Deputy Director for the Investment Centre in the Ministry of Trade and Industry, after his meeting with the Export Credit Board in Stockholm on Tuesday.
The EKN also does importer credit ratings to assess the credibility of foreign companies with which the Swedish companies wish to trade.
!Gaoseb also met the ALMI, a development finance institution operating as the Namibia Development Corporation (NDC), looking at financing small and medium enterprises.
"Since we are revamping our Namibia Development Corporation, including the issue of micro-financing, we thought we must try to understand how ALMI operates," said !Gaoseb.
!Gaoseb also met the Swedish Open Gate, which operates as the Investment Centre within the Namibian Ministry of Trade and Industry.
The two institutions are already mooting cooperation agreements or memoranda of understanding in training and capacity building programmes.
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