GOVT THE PROBLEM, NOT ECONOMY

DID you notice how much time it took our Parliament to approve the E1.2 billion International Convention Centre and Five Star Hotel (ICCFISH) Loan Bill?

It was only last week that the Loan Bill was tabled in Parliament and just this week’s Monday night our esteemed Members of Parliament (MPs) approved the loan driving total government debt to E20 billion. Our MPs did not even budge, they just simply seconded the motion to approve without a blink of an eye because the taxpayer is always there to pick up the bill when government makes a mess of the G-wallet.

Clearly, the problem is not that government does not have money or that there isn’t enough money to go around to fund public service delivery in Eswatini. The balance on the G-wallet account or the total reserves the country has at the Central Bank of Eswatini is totally immaterial on how government decides to spend on the economy.

The approval of the E1.2 billion loan to be splashed on unnecessary luxuries is an indication that the tightening of the belt that this new government has been singing since it came to office only applies when it has to spend on items that are necessary expenditures such as health care, scholarships for tertiary students, etc. In other words, if government has to spend money to improve our lives as ordinary citizens, only then does the tightening of the belt apply.

Government is happy to drown the country in debt accumulated from luxury expenditures that will do nothing to move the country towards attaining even the first five Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). To make things worse, we cannot even count on our MPs to do the right thing to put the minister of Finance in his space by putting the interests of emaSwati first, who will in the long-run have to pay for the unwarranted spending that has marred the construction of the ICC and FISH.

Truth

The truth is that the problem is not that there isn’t enough money being generated by the economy such that government always finds itself running short of cash to fund its budget.

The problem is government, not the economy, not you, not me nor the struggling businesses that have done all their best to cough up the taxes that are due to government. The Eswatini Revenue Authority (SRA) is always collecting tax and people and businesses always paying only for government to waste all the sweat and blood money on unnecessary capital projects that end up deteriorating the state of the economy and welfare of emaSwati.

So we have heard a lot about the need for revenue diversification so that government can increase the amount of money it collects from the economy each year.

We have seen a lot of Bills being tabled in Parliament to rob emaSwati every cent possible out of every Lilangeni they make in this economy. Government is in this financial year all out to collect as much money it can by putting a tax on every economic activity it can get its claws on. To show for it, our incomes have diminished, everything else costs so much more than we can afford now, and there are still more Tax Bills to be approved in order to take the little bit of money left in our pockets.

Despite all of these tax collections, we still have a fiscal crunch and an ailing economy that has no real hope of turning for the better. This is a self-inflicted fiscal crunch but government is very quiet about tabling real and major changes to cut the unnecessary spending and focus on spending money to deliver public services to emaSwati. The problem is that no one or no entity can hold our government accountable. It can take money and spend it willy-nilly to the detriment of the economy and our MPs will still have the gall to approve more loans to bury the country further into financial ruin.

Government needs to take a stand and admit that it is the main problem and cause for all the economic problems we are experiencing in Eswatini. Without serious commitment to control government expenditure, the ship will continue to sink with all the ICC and FISH and mini Dubais the government has constructed down the valley. 
All around we see a government system reverting back to large delegations on external trips, continuous abuse of government vehicles, and frivolous spending on things we can certainly live without while we, taxpayers, have to continue coughing up money to fund all of this crazy spending. Even the cut on the politicians’ salaries did not stick! So how can we trust this government with our money? Going forward, government needs to be put on a monthly budget and have the Ministry of Finance accounting for every cent being paid out of the G-wallet each month. Without controlling and cutting its expenditure, our government will continue to be the limiting factor in economic recovery in Eswatini.

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