Central bank, Namra partner for transparency

The Bank of Namibia (BoN) and the Namibia Revenue Agency (Namra) have launched a trade verification system to provide transparency and ease of trade processes in the country.

This was announced by BoN spokesperson Kazembire Zemburuka yesterday.

“Over the past years, trade has been heavily dependent on paperwork, necessitating labour-intensive manual handling.

This system automates trade, reduces the reliance on manual processes and advances, and ensures the authenticity of documents,” he said.

Zemburuka said Namibia is among the early adopting African countries to introduce a trade verification system.

“Over the past month, the Bank and Namra conducted nationwide training workshops with various relevant stakeholders to fully unpack the web-based system’s capabilities, integrated with Namra’s automated system for customs data,” Zemburuka said.

He said the system would provide a single source of truth on which both customs and financial services could rely to enable capital exportation as payment for foreign goods and services.

According to Zemburuka, the manual trade process has proven to be taxing and susceptible to errors, fraud and non-compliance.

“The global trade system faces vulnerabilities used for fraud, capital flight, tax evasion, and trade-based money laundering.

“The main issue in national assurance systems stems from the lack of mechanisms to cross-check trade declarations with customs data,” he said.

Furthermore, the Financial Intelligence Centre has observed that Namibia has suffered huge foreign currency losses evidenced by irregular outward remittances for non-existent imports.

“These discovered losses prompted the formation of a public-private partnership, led by the FIC.

“The PPP’s inquiry revealed losses of approximately N$3 billion to N$4 billion over three years, and that contributed to the need for a national framework to align trade declarations with financial transactions in the financial sector,” Zemburuka said.

The system, which officially went live on 15 October, is scheduled to be officially unveiled on 17 November.