Staff Reporter
NAMIBIA Wildlife Resorts (NWR) has reported a historic profit of N$46 million for 2023.
According to Nelson Muremi Ashipala, NWR’s Manager of Corporate Communications, the company’s revenue grew by 32%, rising from N$294 million in 2022 to N$387 million in 2023. This significant revenue increase, he said, led to a remarkable turnaround, with the bottom line improving by 231%, shifting from a loss of N$35 million in 2022 to a profit of N$46 million in 2023.
“Despite increasing inflation, fuel costs, and repo rates during the year under review, operational expenses, excluding reversals on penalties and interest payments on statutory payments and loans settled, increased only by 7%, mainly driven by increased spending on repairs, renovations, and maintenance of our facilities,” Ashipala said.
The Chairperson of NWR’s Board, Ambassador Haroldt /Urib, disclosed that the company also achieved a debt-free status in 2023.
“Our financial performance continued to show resilience in 2023. In particular, long-term loans, statutory loans to financial development and commercial institutions, and tax authorities, which were long-standing challenges in the past, were fully settled in 2023, and the company attained a long-term debt-free status. We demonstrated that it is possible to achieve positive results in the public enterprises domain,” /Urib said.
NWR’s Managing Director, Dr Matthias Ngwangwama, also highlighted that the company continued to make good progress on its strategic value drivers of occupancy growth, revenue, expenses management, profitability, and improvements on the balance sheet.
“The solid financial performance in 2023 and ever-improving profit and balance sheet metrics are a demonstration of our commitment to our national mandate of providing tourism-related services in national parks of Namibia and being an important government arm through which the tourism national objectives are to be met in line with its founding Act, the Namibia Wildlife Resorts Company Act,” Ngwangwama added.
