GOVT SUPPLIERS TO WAIT A BIT LONGER

MBABANE – Hold your horses! Businesses will have to wait a bit longer before their much anticipated payments for services rendered to government eventually get paid.

This is despite an undertaking earlier in the year where government announced that it was in the final stages of securing E3 billion loans to fully settle arrears by the end of September.
The State had disclosed that they were engaging a number of financiers, both local and external, with a view to pay up the arrears with intent to ultimately bolster Eswatini’s economy for the better.

When asked whether they had been able to meet the September deadline as earlier promised, Minister of Finance Communications Officer Setsabile Dlamini could only say: “raising money for the settling of arrears is work in progress. However, it still has to go through Parliament.”
Dlamini assured that a detailed austerity measures report would be issued soon.

Precise

However, she was not precise in terms of the actual date when the report would be issued.
Finance Minister Neal Rijkenberg is on record reiterating in various fora that government remains committed to ensuring that the private sector grows.
The minister mentioned that since he assumed office, about a year ago, they had managed to pay up to E1 billion and continued to make payments as and when enough revenue has been collected to pay off some of the debts.   

Soon after assuming office, Rijkenberg said the State ensured that the E21.83 billion budget for the 2018/19 financial year was fully funded to avoid a situation where they would be prompted to delay payments as a result of the lack of funds.
At the last update, it had been reported that arrears were at around E3 billion.

  
Business Eswatini President Andrew le Roux applauded Rijkenberg for guiding the country through the budgetary process, and presenting a fully-financed budget in the toughest and tightest of fiscal spaces.
He said the budget was being called the best in 30 years by some commentators.
The president said they were fully aware that the country was faced with very real financial challenges, and that this trend had been continuing for several years now.

“In the context of a tighter lending environment, where it is going to become much harder and much more expensive to borrow, the bottom line is that we are spending more than we are earning,” le Roux noted.

In his presentation of the integrated annual report, Central Bank of Eswatini Governor Majozi Sithole further noted that the economic activity was projected to decelerate to 1.4 per cent in 2019 from 2.4 per cent in 2018.

Sithole said this was largely due to worsening fiscal challenges. He said the main sectors that were projected to perform poorly include construction, wholesale and retail and general public administration.

Forward

He said going forward, the gross domestic product (GDP) were projected to increase by 2.9 per cent in 2020 and then retreat to 1.3 per cent and 1.7 per cent in 2021 and 2022, respectively.

The governor said according to official provisional estimates released by the Central Statistics Office, the GDP, which is a measure of economic activity, was estimated to have expanded by 2.4 per cent in 2018 compared to 2.0 per cent in 2017.

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