By Dhiladhila Magazine · Issue 07

The charge lands on the finish, not the foundation – on the tiles, taps and steel that decide a building's quality.

On a Namibian building site, the 61.5% charge on certain Chinese goods is measured in tiles, taps and steel. Much of the material that finishes a building, from sanitary ware and ceramic tiles to structural steel and fittings, has long arrived from China at a low landed price, and the duty now sits between that price and the site. The Namibian broke down the charge that quantity surveyors have started writing into their budgets.

The exposure is concrete. Namibia imported roughly US$18 million of stone, cement, plaster and lime and about US$45 million of iron and steel from China in 2024 by COMTRADE figures, alongside sizeable volumes of plastic sanitary ware and fittings. Where those lines carry duty of 30% or more before import tax, a project’s material bill moves before a single wall goes up.

The finish is where the duty lands

Structure and finish import differently. Bulk cement and much raw material can be sourced within the customs union free of duty, but the higher-value finishing goods, tiles, sanitary ware, taps and rubber seals, are often Chinese and often dutiable, with plastic sanitary ware around 30% and rubber goods higher still. The duty concentrates in exactly the items that give a building its final quality.

That changes where a budget is vulnerable. A contractor watching the shell can be caught by the fit-out, where imported finishes carry the charge and substitution is hardest because clients specify look and brand. The cost pressure sits late in the programme, when a project has least room to redesign.

The tariff hits the finish, not the foundation, and the finish is what clients notice.

Repricing the bill of quantities

For a quantity surveyor, the duty is a line-by-line revision rather than a blanket uplift. Each imported material has to be read against its tariff classification, because a 45% clothing-style rate and a low industrial rate can sit in the same order. Pricing a job on the 61.5% headline over-quotes it, and ignoring the duty under-quotes it. The work is in the middle.

Fixed-price contracts turn that arithmetic into risk. A builder who quoted before absorbing the charge, or who priced Chinese finishes at last year’s landed cost, carries the gap unless the contract allows for it. The lesson is to write material-cost provisions that survive a duty the tender did not fully anticipate.

A tender priced on the old landed cost is a loss waiting for delivery.

The case for sourcing closer

The duty strengthens the argument for regional and local supply. Materials made within the customs union move without customs duty, so a South African tile or a locally moulded fitting can now compete with a Chinese one that was previously unbeatable on price. For repeatable projects, qualifying a regional supplier becomes a saving rather than a preference.

Substitution has limits on a building site. Some specifications call for imported grades or specific products, and lead times and quality have to hold. But the tariff shifts the default, so the first quote a buyer seeks is now a regional one, and the Chinese option has to beat a duty to win the line.

When the import carries a duty, the regional supplier gets the first call.

Megaprojects feel it at scale

On a large infrastructure job the percentages become real money. A duty of 30% or more on imported steel, fittings and finishes, applied across a project running to hundreds of millions, is a budget line that planners cannot treat as rounding. The bigger the build, the more a sourcing strategy is worth writing before procurement begins.

This rewards early planning over late reaction. A developer who maps duty exposure at the design stage can specify around it, favouring customs-union material where performance allows and pricing the genuinely necessary imports honestly. The project that treats the tariff as a design input spends less than the one that meets it at the border.

On a megaproject, a sourcing plan drawn early is cheaper than a duty met late.

For a contractor, quantity surveyor or property developer, the 61.5% ceiling is now a line item, not a headline. The decision is whether to keep specifying Chinese finishes and carry the duty, revise the bill of quantities line by tariff line, or design toward customs-union material that moves without customs duty, before the next fixed-price tender locks the number in.

Sources: The Namibian; Namibia imports of stone, cement, plaster and lime from China (Trading Economics); Namibia imports of iron and steel from China (Trading Economics)