A Natural Resource Accounting project is currently underway to document the status of the nation’s
resources and their economic use. Minerals and fisheries account for much of Namibia’s GDP and
export earnings, and feature prominently in this project. Extractive resources like minerals and
fisheries are capable of generating a great deal of “resource rent,” that is, income above the normal
return to capital invested in economic activities in the country, an income attributable to the scarcity
of the resource relative to demand for the resource on the world market. From an economic
perspective, sustainable and equitable management of these resources requires that resource rent be
recovered by the government through appropriate taxes. This study reports estimates the amount of
rent generated by these extractive industries and analyses the success of the government in recovering
this rent for the good of the people of Namibia. The findings indicate that while the resource rents
generated by mining have been captured, through taxes the rents generated by fisheries are not yet
fully captured by the fishing quota levies