Ghana and the Republic of Namibia have met for a three-day business networking reception to deliberate on ways to strengthen bilateral relations through the state-owned enterprises in both countries.

The reception is happening from Wednesday, September 11 to Friday, September and is on the theme, ‘Enhancing Namibia-Ghana Relations through State-Owned Enterprises’ and forms part of a visit by a 16-member delegation led by the Namibian Ministry of Finance and Public Enterprises to benchmark with the State Interests and Governance Authority (SIGA) and its affiliated institutions to gain insights into best practices in governance, management and, performance of public enterprises.

Executive Director at the Department of Public Enterprises under the Ministry of Finance and Public Enterprises of Namibia, Louise Shixwameni, during a sideline interview, called for the deliberate creation of opportunities targeting the enhancement of indigenous business ownership.

“Because of our colonial past, most of our key economic sector have not been owned by indigenous Namibians so government have created state-owned companies around key economic sector to correct that market failure and ensure that as we restructure, public enterprises do not increase economic disempowerment.

“While we liberalise these economic key companies that are owned by the state, as we liberalise, we ensure that there is sufficient enabling environment for the private sector and that private sector that I talked about is a private sector that is indigenously owned for a local entrepreneur who is an IT expert who can feel that I can compete with a telecom company because if the telecom company is so powerful and is state-owned, that telecom company, the indigenous Namibian or indigenous Ghanaian may not be able to participate in it.”

On his part, the acting Director-General of SIGA, John Boadu, also called for reduced state control over state-owned enterprises (SOEs).

“We want a situation where government interest in state owned enterprises will reduce to less than 30 percent. Government control in terms of appointment on boards and CEOS will reduce to zero. The only reason one will be on the board was to meet a certain criteria, the set skills that is required for one to turn those businesses around, whether you are NPP, QPP ZY and P and all that so that we can get the value worth of the amount of money we spend in running these businesses.”