THE Ministry of Industrialisation and Trade will hold public consultations on the draft national policy on sustainable special economic zones, in Windhoek tomorrow.
Affected members of the industry are invited to participate and give input on the new policy.
The aim of the ministry is to introduce a new framework to govern Namibias approach to an industrial strategy and to update the existing export processing zone regime.
“Changes to the industrialisation strategy of the country have been in the works since the first cost-benefit review of the export processing zone regime in 2012,” said the ministry.
One meeting will be held at the NamPower Convention Centre in Windhoek tomorrow and the other will be at Walvis Bay on 22 November.
Both meetings will run from 10h00 to 16h30.
“During the consultative meetings, the ministry will take note of inputs from members of the public for consideration in the finalisation and implementation of the national policy on sustainable special economic zone policy,” the ministry added.
Explaining the rationale behind the exercise, a ministry spokesperson that commented anonymously said last year the Ministry of Finance had repealed some of the provisions of the export processing zone after Namibia had been listed as a tax haven.
“This was due to incentives provided for under the EPZ regime and the government had decided to come up with new incentives for the industry.”
He said the ministry sent out invitations for written submissions on the issue and revived some submissions.
“However, due to the Covid-19 pandemic and other factors, we decided to give those people who had not submitted any inputs a chance to do so,” he said, adding that he was not certain if other meetings would be held at other towns in the country.
Email: matthew@namibian.com.na
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