By George Obulutsa
ARUSHA, Tanzania (Reuters) - Namibia expects to increase foreign direct investment by 10 percent in 2008 from $4 billion last year, helped by mining, agriculture and tourism, a senior investment official said on Tuesday.
The southern African country's economy relies on tourism, beef production, financial services and minerals such as gold, diamonds and lately uranium.
"In projections for 2008 and 2009, we see a 10 percent rise on total investments that have come in 2007," Freddie Gaoseb, Namibia Investment Centre's deputy director for projects and incentives management, told Reuters.
Gaoseb said the desert nation's foreign direct investment had picked up after a sharp fall in 2006, when it dropped to $2.5 billion from $4 billion a year before.
Speaking on the sidelines of a China-Africa business meeting in northern Tanzania, Gaoseb said Namibia was attracting investments in tourism from businesses keen to cash in on the 2010 World Cup tournament in neighbouring South Africa.
"The tourism sector has been growing. Because of the interest in 2010 in South Africa, tourists are coming in and looking at the region," he said. Beef exports were also rising, he added.
Namibia is among the top 10 fish producers in the world, catching mostly hake and mackerel off its coast, and this should attract investors in areas such as refrigeration, Gaoseb added.
The mining sector, long a major source of FDI, would also continue to attract investments to the country's gold, diamond, uranium and copper deposits. Namibia is trying to develop its diamond industry beyond just extraction.
"We have been attracting investors from places like Israel and India, Belgium, coming into the diamond cutting and polishing industry. What we are trying to do is to attract more value addition for our local resources," Gaoseb said.
But he said the country faced challenges such as a lack of credit for local businesses and a shortage of skilled labour. The government was addressing that by revamping its tertiary education institutions. Gaoseb said Namibia was seeking Chinese companies interested in construction.
