AMENDMENTS OF ACTS TO EASE DOING BUSINESS

MBABANE – The Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Trade will implement five means to ease doing business in the country in a drive to resuscitate the economy.

This was disclosed by the Minister of Commerce, Industry and Trade, Manqoba Khumalo. He said this year’s reforms would include data corrections, information transparency through publication of information on services rendered by the different service providers online and largely by legislative amendments.

Khumalo said the list of pieces of legislation to be amended include: The Environment, Audit, Assessment and Review Regulations; Trading Licenses Order, Land Speculation Control Act, Construction Industry Regulations; Consumer Credit Act; Consumer Credit Regulations, Deeds Registry Act and Stock Exchange Listing Act to mention a few.

“To ensure that Eswatini also improves in the Protecting Minority Investors Indicator where there was a significant drop of 22 places in the Doing Business 2020 report, government is inviting private sector companies to list in the stock market to ensure that Eswatini meets the threshold requirement by the World Bank of 10 listed companies in the national stock market,” Khumalo said.

He said the ministry was overcoming challenges that made doing business difficult by government taking ownership and active leadership. Khumalo said Cabinet and his office were leading from the front as the ease of doing business was a key priority area of delivery in the Government Strategic Road map 2018-2023.

This, he said, meant that the doing business programme was a standing agenda item at Cabinet meetings and reported issues blocking implementation of reforms were quickly elevated and given priority and dealt with forthwith. The minister further said his ministry would be embarking on digitisation which is the improvement of online platforms and publication of information, guidelines, legislation and regulations on the websites of the service providers.

Khumalo said the following online systems had already or were currently being developed. These are online company registration; electronic payments system, e-filling, electronic case management and online interactive interface for electricity connection.
“Eswatini has started and needs to continue to implement deeper reforms that are based on legislative improvements through amendments and new pieces of legislation.”

Khumalo further said there would be recruitment of more contributors or respondents to the World Bank Doing Business survey.  He said there used to be one, two or three respondents per indicator in the 10 topics in the Doing Business Index.
Moving forward, he said his ministry had recruited at least 10 respondents per indicator and would continue to engage them to respond truthfully and factually to the questionnaire survey.

Furthermore, he said there shall be extensive media and stakeholder engagement. Khumalo said his ministry would have and would continue to engage all stakeholders and inform the general public about the status of reforms.
“These are our stakeholders – implementing agencies including government ministries/departments/parastatals, private sector captains of industry, business formations, contributors and the media houses.”

Information

Another strategy that shall be implemented includes extensive information exchange and detailed technical communication with the World Bank. He said government had established reliable links to communicate technical information with the Doing Business Team in the World Bank.  This, he said, included uploading reports on the Online Update platform, responding to questionnaires and video conferences for data verification and clarifications. Lastly, he said the Investor Roadmap Committee had been suspended.

“The persistent poor attendance of the technical meetings by representatives of ministries has driven the respective principal secretaries into forming the Investment Committee. The Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Trade in consultation with the Cabinet Sub-Committee on investment decided to suspend the investor road map committee meetings; however, the discussions and consultations take place during the stakeholder consultations which are normally held periodically targeting the cycle of survey questionnaires by the World Bank.”

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