‘EXTEND TRADING HOURS FOR QUICK RECOVERY’

MBABANE - SARFED is proposing the extension of trading hours to enable quick business recovery.

Businesses can now operate up to 5pm after the relaxed curfew announced last Friday. The Southern Africa Research Foundation (SARFED) observed that since the advent of COVID-19 in 2020, the business climate in the country had been faced with several challenges which also contributed towards the closure of most businesses, especially those firms at emergent level.  “The competitive business climate of the country has a downward trend, hence being a potential threat of business viability and investor confidence in the country. Urgent measures to create business incentives would bring back the country to its original competitive position in both regional and global markets,” said SARFED Regional Coordinator George Choongwa.
Choongwa said relaxed regulations would result in an increase in business establishment which would be one of the solutions to high level of unemployment, which might have come up as a result of large business closures.

Contributed

“The country is still faced with fiscal imbalances despite its attempt to address the situation through the engagement of several structural adjustment measures which contributed towards the revision and reduction of the country’s recurrent spending trends, such as the freezing of the government wage bill. “However, with the government’s interventions by relaxations of trading regulations, the trends of revenue collection through various structures are likely to take an uptrend in the long run as the economy stabilises,” stressed SARFED. Choongwa also highlighted that despite some success in containing the wage bill, the fiscal deficit of the country between the year 2019 and 2020 remained elevated, translating into further domestic arrears and public debt build-up. However, on the positive side, there was temporary surge in manufacturing exports and weak domestic demand contributed to improve the external current account. SARFED felt if government declared a friendly business environment as a means of attracting economically driven investors, the chances of becoming competitive in both regional and global markets were very high.

Strategy

The country had already built its strategic competency in regions like the Southern African Customs Union (SACU), Southern African Development Community (SADC) and The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) with high possibility of even trading on the COMESA-EAC-SADC tripartite African markets. Another recommendation made by SARFED is the improvement on the business ecosystem. This would promote the development of a strong, competitive and sustainable value supply chain systems. “Subsidise business utilities such  as electricity and internet tariffs and fuel. These factor inputs were essential with the determination of business sustainability and competitiveness,” suggested SARFED.

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