The National Petroleum Corporation of Namibia (NAMCOR) is not yet out of the woods, despite a N$1.9 billion lifeline from the government last year to get out of its financial troubles, including paying its creditors.

NAMCOR's interim managing director, Ebson Uanguta, highlighted that the company has put in place strategies and policies to address its financial instability.

The government's N$1.2 billion assistance to NAMCOR allowed the entity to avoid liquidation, given the company's debts of around N$1.9 billion dollars. 

NAMCOR's interim managing director, Ebson Uanguta, who only joined the company earlier this year, spoke on the company's progress in addressing its financial state. 

While some of its debts have been paid, he added that the company still has a lot of work to do in ensuring it does not sink.

"We need the suppliers of NAMCOR because we trade in oil. As we know, Namibia does not produce oil or petroleum products. We need to import this from other nations where oil is found. And when we import this, we trade it now in a domestic economy to supply the demand. And that is possibly where things went wrong, and hence NAMCOR found itself having significant debts. Because of that debt, we needed some kind of support from the government as shareholders. We really want to thank the government for coming in fully to support NAMCOR at that difficult time. They came up with a guarantee of N$1.2 billion; it was a sovereign guarantee, and the money was given by the commercial banks. So that has really enabled us somehow to stabilise the entity. It helped us to restructure some of our debts and almost brought us back to business."

Uanguta acknowledges that the company stood to lose credibility with creditors and suppliers and says Namcor has had to re-strategise and come up with a recovery plan. 

"Part of that recovery plan was focused on how to stabilise the company and making sure to introduce efficiency measures to be able to ensure that there have been unnecessary expenses and that these expenses are contained and also strengthen the processes and bring about policies that are addressing some of the challenges that we found. Because in many cases, when companies governance lapses. It requires that some of the policies need to be re-updated or strengthened. So that whatever was done does not happen again."

NAMCOR owns stakes in various significant oil discoveries in the Orange Basin, including the Venus-1X prospect operated by TotalEnergies.

These discoveries are anticipated to become operational in the future, and with recent oil discoveries, Uanguta said, income from these sources should greatly help in solving NAMCOR's cash flow troubles.