Namibia paid commodities trader Glencore N$448 million in outstanding fees after the government cancelled an oil supply contract, the Southern Times reported on Friday.

The paper cited Mathews Hamutenya, a senior executive at state-owned petroleum firm Namcor, as saying the last payment was made last week.

Glencore said in a statement: "This was not a particularly good contract financially for Glencore but despite that we supplied product in accordance with the agreement."

"We have now had this contract cancelled unilaterally by the government and we intend to pursue this. Namcor's difficulties were related to the low prices it was required to charge its customers downstream, rather than its agreement with us," it said.

Namcor had a 50-50 percent fuel supply deal with Glencore that the government terminated last year after saying it was not in Namcor's favour, the paper said.

Namibia Namibia