The managing director of Standard Bank Namibia, Theo Mberirua took over the reigns of the Banker’s Association of Namibia (BAN) as its president on 1 May 2005, the organisation announced this week. Mberirua succeeded Johan Swanepoel, MD of Bank Windhoek, who has been President of BAN since April 2004. Established in 1997, the Bankers Association provides a consultative forum on matters of policy. It acts as a channel of communication for the banking industry and endeavours to member institutions. All registered Namibian banks are members of the institution. Lazarus Ipangelwa, managing director of FNB Namibia, as vice president, will support Theo Mberirua. Meanwhile Swanepoel will move to Bank Windhoek’s associate, Capricorn Investments as MD on 1 July 2005 and James Hill will become MD of Bank Windhoek the same day. It is the first time an English-speaker is to head the bank, which started decades ago as an arm of the South African Volkskas.

Several banks signed a US$ 50 million loan agreement in Munich, Germany last week for Standard Bank Namibia. Sealing the deal in this way, Standard Bank Namibia made its debut on the international loan market, the bank announced. The loan will run for 364 days. Several international banks like Barclays, BayernLB, Commerzbank Aktiengesellschaft, HSH Nordbank, ING, Mizuho Corporate Bank, Natexis Banques Populaires, Standard Chartered Bank, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation Europe and WestLB, each a mandated loan arranger, contributed US$ 5 million to the loan, which is used for "general financing purposes".

Standard Bank Namibia is a wholly owned subsidiary of Standard Bank Group in South Africa. The Group maintains operations in 17 other African countries and in 21 countries outside Africa with more than 35,000 employees worldwide. Standard Bank is the largest commercial bank in Namibia.

The Spanish-owned NovaNam fishing company at Lüderitz has started again with fish production for export services on Wednesday this week. Workers had picketed in front of the factory gates at Lüderitz and staged illegal protests against what they called unfair wage negotiations. For nearly 3 weeks the factory was unproductive, costing million of N$ in losses. The fishing vessels were moored in a nearby bay during that time. After an intervention of fisheries minister Abraham Iyambo both the labour union and NovaNam agreed to new wages, which was to the satisfaction of the workers. Since December 2004, about 1000 jobs have been lost in the fishing industry due to reconstruction, retrenchments and illegal strikes. Minister Iyambo again appealed to the industry and the labour unions to rather agree than to be at loggerheads as this was detrimental to the fishing industry and Namibia’s reputation as an investment destination. Iyambo made these remarks while opening a new

N$10 million hake production facility at Corvima Fishing in Walvis Bay. Iyambo further stressed that new fishing licences and quota allocations would depend on how much companies invested in Namibia to what degree they are namibianised.