National Technical Committee commences estimation of Illicit Financial Flows (IFFs) in Namibia

Namibia is making progress in implementing the workplan to estimate IFFs, under the Development Account project entitled “Defining, estimating and disseminating statistics on illicit financial flows (IFFs) in Africa,, with the support of UN Namibia, under the leadership of the Bank of Namibia (BoN) as the National Focal Point.

As continuation to the National Multi-Stakeholder Inception and Capacity Building Workshop held in October 2021, to operationalize and advance Namibia’s evidence-based work on IFFs, the Namibia National Technical Committee decided on two methods for estimation, at the Capacity Building and estimation workshop: Statistical measurement of Tax and Commercial IFFs in Namibia from 14-16 February 2022, Swakopmund.

In her Opening remarks, Ms. Penelao Kapenda, Chair, National Inter-Agency Task Force on IFFs and Deputy Director of Exchange Control at BON expressed that: “In December 2021, Namibia together with other African countries received the capacity building training on the 6 methodologies developed by UNCTAD to be used for a pilot test to estimate IFFs.  Following the training, Namibia selected the two methodologies namely the Partner Country and Price Filter method, which will be used in these 3 days to conduct a pilot test that further aims to improve the confidence level of the country to finalise the project study.”

Speaking on behalf of the UN in her remarks, Ms. Eunice Ajambo, Economist at UN Namibia emphasized that “As the United Nations, we feel privileged to be invited by the Government and partners to be a part of Namibia’s journey to understand the scope and magnitude of Illicit Financial Flows, and then actually try and do something about curbing them, in order to contribute to the development objectives of the country.”

In his Closing remarks, Mr. Ananias N. Iiyambo, Chief, Internal Affairs at the Namibia Revenue Agency (NamRa), applauded the National Technical Team for the progress made thus far, as supported by UN Namibia, UNECA, UNICEF, UNCTAD, and UNODC, and expressed that “There’s a high expectation on Namibia to excel amongst the chosen 12 African countries participating in the pilot phase. This project shall be of assistance in detecting crime, money laundering, tax evasion and avoidance, corruption, “ further stressing that IFF definition should be expanded to include any transaction with potential harm to economy (whether of illicit origin or not).

The Technical Committee, under the National Coordinating role of the Bank of Namibia as the Focal Point so far includes officials from the Bank of Namibia (BoN), Financial Intelligence Center (FIC), Namibia Revenue Agency (NamRa), National Planning Commission (NPC), Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources (MFMR), Ministry of Mines and Energy (MME), Namibia Financial Institutions Supervisory Authority (NAMFISA), Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC), Namibian Police (Nampol), United Nations Agencies, among others.

The UN System coordinated by UN Namibia and comprising UNECA, UNCTAD, UNICEF continue to offer technical support, under the leadership of the Government.

For additional information, please contact:

1. Ms. Penelao Kapenda. Chair, National Inter-Agency Task Force on IFFs (Penelao.Kapenda@BON.CON.NA)
2. Mr. Jecob Nyamadzawo. Social Policy Manager, P4C, UNICEF Namibia (jnyamadzawo@unicef.org )
3. Ms. Eunice Ajambo. Economist and Development Coordination Officer, UN Namibia (ajambo@un.org )