Quota auction flopped but had a silver lining
Finance minister Ipumbu Shiimi and his fisheries counterpart Albert Kawana ended the week as the most maligned leaders of government after they, rather boldly, announced the spectacular failure of the state’s inaugural fish quota auction.
While the auction did embarrassingly bad, there were pockets of silver linings.
One of them was the transparency within which the auction occurred. The other was the courage for government, even with tricky elections looming large, to come out and admit its failure in this matter.
From where we stand, the principle of auctioning fishing quotas remains one of the best decisions ever by the Geingob administration.
But just like Vision 2030, if principles are not backed by genuine efforts to make them work, we can wait until the second coming of Jesus to see these come to fruition.
Good ideas are common. Look around you and you would see blueprints about how this country would have Africa’s most competitive economy in 2020, or construction of the N$20 billion mega smart-city investment in Tsumeb.
What is uncommon are people who will work hard enough to turn those ideas into reality.
We are pleased that the government is determined to go ahead with future auctions of fish quota. Therein lies an opportunity to refine processes and ensure the next round is free from the schoolboy errors that riddled the inaugural process.
While the auction did embarrassingly bad, there were pockets of silver linings.
One of them was the transparency within which the auction occurred. The other was the courage for government, even with tricky elections looming large, to come out and admit its failure in this matter.
From where we stand, the principle of auctioning fishing quotas remains one of the best decisions ever by the Geingob administration.
But just like Vision 2030, if principles are not backed by genuine efforts to make them work, we can wait until the second coming of Jesus to see these come to fruition.
Good ideas are common. Look around you and you would see blueprints about how this country would have Africa’s most competitive economy in 2020, or construction of the N$20 billion mega smart-city investment in Tsumeb.
What is uncommon are people who will work hard enough to turn those ideas into reality.
We are pleased that the government is determined to go ahead with future auctions of fish quota. Therein lies an opportunity to refine processes and ensure the next round is free from the schoolboy errors that riddled the inaugural process.
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