HOW TO GET TO 2021

It's the end of the year and if we are lucky, we will be in 2021 in about a week’s time, although there is absolutely nothing to look forward to but hope that somehow everything will be okay.

Without a doubt, Eswatini has entered the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and it looks like things are about to get rough. The country’s leaders, particularly Cabinet and the rest of government, need to usher the nation safely into 2021and come up with new and quick strategies to keep emaSwati alive. We need to flatten the curve so that Eswatini can avoid another lockdown in order to keep the economy intact to protect lives and livelihoods. The question is; how do we get to 2021 alive and how do we prepare the economy to survive what looks like will be another difficult year?

Factors

There are many factors to consider but the bottom line rests with how government will decide to use the money it collects from the economy in the upcoming national budget. Next year’s budget will be the most critical one. Everyone can see that the economy is at a tipping point; one wrong or selfish move by government, the economy will collapse. The country’s resources need to be allocated diligently in a manner that will prevent yet another recession and fiscal crisis.

Government simply needs to put the interest of ordinary citizens first before all the frivolous spending we have witnessed in previous budgets. This time around so much is at stake – lives are at stake – and if government doesn’t put the nation first, the economy may not survive to table another budget in 2022. Getting to 2021 means government needs to step up its game to fix the key issues that are limiting social and economic development progress. There is no question that the social sector, particularly health and education, needs to be prioritised in the coming budget. However, we have all seen that no amount of money can fix Eswatini’s health and education sectors.

Investments

While investments are needed, the current structure and administration of these sectors creates no value to ordinary citizens and to government as most of the money evaporates in administration costs, corruption and ineffective delivery of services. So, while the minister of Finance must continue to prioritise health and education, Eswatini desperately needs a new model of delivering these services to the general public. As it is, these sectors are just simply old, tired and incapable of coming up with innovations that can save us from COVID-19, deliver world class education to the next generation and, least of all, carry us through 2021.

There are other thorns that must be uprooted along the way, if Eswatini wants to realise the benefits of the plans and strategies that have been put in place by our departed prime minister. The biggest issue is the wage bill and how government has turned to be the main creator of employment rather than setting up the private sector to lead in that regard. In the 2021/22 budget, the Finance minister cannot afford to dish out E8 billion to our darling civil servants without compromising critical public services such as the response to COVID-19 and healthcare. The civil service has become a mafia that is holding the economy at ransom.

In the private sector, all this bloated administration would have long gone. People in the private sector have to make do with subpar wages while our civil servants are always at logger heads with government demanding the impossible of the G-wallet. It’s time to cut the wage bill by at least 40 per cent to save E3.2 billion so that government can allocate that money to real public services instead of paying people to be on lockdown, to be assistants of assistants, or simply to do nothing and take accumulated leave days.

Issues

There are other money burning issues that need to be tackled as a matter of urgency. The Central Transportation Administration (CTA) issue needs to be finalised and the keys to that garage thrown away to save the country billions of taxpayers’ money.The looting on capital projects must come to an end because by now the key players in this industry are well known together with their tricks of on how they milk the public procurement system.

The minister must turn off this tap and save the G-wallet. The forces, especially the police and army, are also another big CTA bleeding the economy dry as they are always guaranteed to overspend on their allocated budgets. On top of these money problems, Eswatini’s debt is continuing to grow now pushing 47 per cent of the country’s GDP. How will the minister pay for all of this debt with such a depressed economy and with half of all tax collected directed to paying civil servants, commissions, etc? Just maybe, with all these taps shut, government will stop coming after ordinary citizens for SACU receipts we know nothing about, tax on every move we make, and more taxes just to fill the revenue gap. Things are not looking good and our spirits are down.

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