MINISTER ADVOCATES FOR PROMPT PAYMENT OF SMES

MBABANE – The Minister of Commerce, Industry and Trade, Manqoba Khumalo, says among other key focus areas that he will be pushing for, is the prioritisation of payments for SMEs supplying government.

In a recent exclusive interview with the Times Business Desk, the minister said there has been a strong outcry that his ministry and Eswatini Investments Promotion Authority (EIPA) are sort of focusing on enabling business for foreign direct investors, leaving the locals behind. He said this makes it seem like government is leaving behind small and medium enterprises (SMEs), women and youth-owned businesses. Khumalo said in order to address this, he is going to be passionately pushing for the payments of SMEs doing business with government to be prioritised.

Enough resources

“Whenever government does not have enough resources, the first injection of revenue that comes to our coffers, we must prioritise paying SMEs, women and youth-owned businesses,” said the minister. Khumalo said they also need to make sure that the threshold of procurement gazetted for emaSwati in the procurement system for State-owned enterprises and government is improved from the current 10 per cent. “We are serious about keeping the economy growing and emaSwati getting to feel the impact of that,” said Khumalo.

The minister added that there must be a mechanism to hold the government tender Board accountable to those thresholds. “This idea that certain businesses and areas will be reserved for emaSwati is something that will be hammered on very aggressively through the Citizens Economic Empowerment Act. The minister said they are also concerned about the issue of access to finance for local SMEs. He said in order to address that, they are working closely with the Ministry of Finance to make it easy to access initiatives like the Small Scale Enterprise Loan Guarantee Scheme (SSELGS).

He noted that in the past, such was only accessed through commercial banks, but now they are making it easy to access such through other non-banking financial institutions (NBFIs).
another brilliant idea. Khumalo further highlighted that the establishment of the Eswatini Agricultural Development Fund (EADF) is also another brilliant idea, as emaSwati venturing into agriculture will have this specific fund to assist them financially. “We are also looking at EswatiniBank, as to how they can improve their portfolio of offerings to that more SMEs can access the much-needed funding,” said the minister.

He added that government has a desire to simplify the work permit regime, as a lot of businesses are complaining about the status quo. Khumalo said you may find that some investors plough their money and get only two or three-year permits. He said this leaves the businesspeople with very limited time to work in the country and makes them uncertain about their future. He said, therefore, they are putting in proposals with the Ministry of Home Affairs to see how they can get reasonable time work permits for investors. He said all this and other plans were carried out in the new investment policy that will soon be tabled in Parliament. He said this policy also seeks to address issues of developing a one-stop shop for businesses.

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