FESBC CONDUCTING RESEARCH ON BUSINESS TRADE BARRIERS

MBABANE – FESBC is currently conducting a research which seeks to identify gaps, particularly in the judiciary space, whose impact has seen multiple businesses shutting down.

The Federation of Eswatini Business Community (FESBC) met with the Judiciary last Friday to engage on how best the research can be conducted to yield the desired fruits, which would help business people better understand how it operates and how business trade barriers in the Judiciary space could be mitigated. FESBC Head of Business Transformation Mavela Sigwane, said their research is aimed at understanding how the Judiciary, sheriffs and the lawyers operate. He mentioned that the research also seek to unearth how lawyers make their wealth in the profession.

Research

“The purpose of this research is to understand from a business point of view, the relationship between the Judiciary, the financial sector and the lawyers, because what we have seen is that businesses are being closed because of auctions, where we get to know about when a sheriff comes to visit that business,” he said. Sigwane said when the sheriff comes to deliver the court papers communicating the intention to auction that business, they do not explain the intention properly to the business people, save to say that one can sense the pressure they come with.

“The business community has sanctioned this research so that we can, collectively as a country, prevent any physical fight that can come from this, because the anger level is now high from the business side. They are high because they are seeing their dreams collapsing because of court judgments, which are made in the courts,” he said.Sigwane said it was understandable that these were professionals in their own spaces and FESBC wanted to understand from a business perspective, as to where the gaps are, which as business people, they might not understand better.He said business people needed to be assisted to understand what a court order is, what a prima facie evidence is and all other Judiciary terminologies.

Litigations

“This will help us prevent any litigations for businesses and also be able to assist business people to comply with the various agreements which they sign with financial institutions, so that we do not get to see matters in court, we do not get to see businesses closed and we believe that we should be getting the country somewhere in terms of the socio-economic space,” he said. Sigwane said the FESBC research portfolio would be engaging the Judiciary from Friday and the rest of the month of August 2024, with a view of making an informed decision on setting up the business legal protection unit, which should guard the safety and security of an ordinary business person in the country, against all what has been seen and evidenced in recent times. It is also to inform the strategic plan 2025-2030 of FESBC, as the current one is coming to an end in June 2025, especially on matters of legal representation and protection of business people in the country.

“To further engage the international business community for support and protection of FESBC members from the current judicial and financial sector, who seem to be jointly collapsing the local business people, if the engagements will confirm what we already have,” he said.

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