On Tuesday, 24 June 2025, the Parliamentary Committee on Economy and Industry, Public Administration under the leadership of Hon Iipumbu Shiimi, Chairperson and Hon Hilma N Iita, Deputy Chairperson engaged the Governor of the Bank of Namibia (BON). It is the first time and opportunity that the new Standing Committee of the 8th Parliament to engage with BON. The mandate of the Committee is providing parliamentary supervision and oversight of the economy, industry, public administration and planning of the country.
In terms of Section 68 of the BON Act of 2020, the Governor must appear at least once a year to the relevant committee of Parliament to report on its operations and affairs of the BON, monetary policy operations, the state of the economy and other relevant matters. In his opening remarks the chairman of the committee explained the purpose of that legal requirement. He mentioned that the Bank is an important national institution with the mandate of contributing to the economic health of Namibia.
As part of this mandate BON takes decisions that have significant impact on the lives of ordinary Namibians. It is therefore important for BON to account to the public through the Standing Committee on how BON is carrying out its mandate. Hence the engagement meeting today. The Governor assured the Committee that inflation is within sustainable level. He also reported that BON has put in place necessary measures to support financial stability. He further reported that BON has concluded the impact assessment on fees and charges and this assessment will soon be shared with the Ministry of Finance to finalize the regulations on same in line with Section 107 of Banking Institutions Act of 2023, aimed at curbing the high cost of banking services. Members of the committee commended BON for effectively carrying out its mandate.
The members emphasized, among others, that BON should:
- Continue to ensure that inflation is effectively mitigated
- Take due care that the new strategy to invest in gold will not undermine the level of the country’s foreign exchange reserves
- The impact assessment on fees and charges is expeditiously shared with the Minister of Finance to enable her to finalise the regulations on fees and charges
- strengthen its capacity in key central banking functions to better manage the economy, which is increasingly becoming complex
- Continue to contribute to financial stability by developing more capacity in stress testing and crisis simulation
- Ensure that its operational expenses remain within reasonable ranges.
- Put in place platforms that will enable young people to receive payments from outside when they sell their creative content. In this regard BON informed the Committee that there is no legal hindrance for these platforms to be made available in the country but it is mainly a business decision. The central bank, however, indicated that they are working together with MICT to attract service providers of platforms such as PayPal, Google Pay, Apple Pay to setup in Namibia.
