BUDGETING CYCLE UPON US

We are in the month of October, and this marks the beginning of the budgeting cycle, the period where all ministries submit their budget requests to the Ministry of Finance.

I note with concern how civil society organisations and other interest groups tend to make noise around budget issues in February when the minister tables the budget before Parliament. Sadly, by that time it is too little, too late; the time to begin advocacy is now! It is for this reason that I found it fitting to use today’s column to highlight what ought to be the upcoming year’s budget priorities.

Budget for dialogue

It would be very heartbreaking if we would not have any budget allocation for the dialogue that we so badly need as a country. If I had it in my tentacles I would have, as of yesterday, reallocated the E200 million that was allocated for the purchase of vaccines and direct it to the dialogue, since we are now dependent on the Americans and the COVAX facility.

We cannot afford to be in this space where schools are burnt, monthly protests, police posts being burnt and pure anarchy. This is not a conducive environment; it is bad for foreign capital, bad for domestic capital and outright bad for the economy. The leadership needs to grab the situation by the horns and usher in some tranquil equilibrium.

Increase Youth Fund

The labour force survey data released a couple of weeks ago shows a dire situation for the youth and it is imperative that something be done to arrest the unemployment problem. Entrepreneurship is one of the avenues that can be used to remedy the situation. Currently the Youth Enterprise Revolving Fund (YERF) offers microloans of up to E20 000 to individuals and up to E100 000 to cooperatives. This, I’m afraid, is just sufficient to cover small and micro enterprises, in most cases these are survivalist enterprises. It is no surprise that as soon as the youth are offered jobs they will take those jobs because the return on those investments is pretty low compared to salaried work. I suggest that government becomes serious about youth empowerment, we need to float at least E300 million to the YERF.

These funds should be used as a loan guarantee scheme targeting the youth, with less stringent rules compared to the current loan guarantee scheme by government. Disbursement should occur through EswatiniBank and FINCORP. This way we create proof of viability and bankability for youth enterprises, which are not catered by the banking system. High tech programmes with low capital investment and low collateral should also be prioritised.

We know the youth engages in the tech sector where there is usually no physical product to be bonded as collateral; we need the YERF to be able to provide the collateral should the youth coming up with innovations. In all, let us give the youth something to work with so they can improve their lives and not subject them to high standards that need one to have a rich father to meet.

Liberate scholarships

Government needs to consider setting up an independent scholarship board, where all the funds collected will be replanted into the fund and not to the consolidated government account. It would be great if we could have an allocation to make this a reality. This would aid and make the scholarship fund more efficient and less political and also remove unnecessary processes from it. We also need the fund to consider funding vocational skills training or rather training in trade. This will aid and give a majority of the youth who do not have tertiary level training a skill they can use to survive. Government needs to consider funding trainings in local skills development centres as a pathway to economic development and emancipation of the number of people who are trapped in the poverty cycle.

No new infrastructure projects

Also, can we just stop with any new infrastructure projects until we master a way to make the multi-billion investments work for the people. I understand that all these are premised in trickle-down theory and transfer of skills, we need to figure out as a country if we do get to figure out how to make infrastructure development trickle down to the people and can we get the infrastructure projects to really transfer skills and build local capacity otherwise it is such a drain to the economy. And can we not even consider the new Parliament building in the next financial year, until we have a good strategy on how to make it work for the economy.

Budget for the people

We need, now more than ever, to have a people centred budget, one that will be able to respond to the needs of the people and support the resilience of the people to the current shocks. The time to rally and lobby for a budget of the people is now!

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