SME SECTOR NEEDS MORE THAN RHETORIC

THE debilitating situation in the kingdom’s economic outlook is really a cause for concern. We wake up everyday now to newspaper adverts of businesses being sold and public auctions are now the order of the day. Small Medium and Micro Enterprises (SMMEs) are shutting down and their properties are going under the hammer at an alarming rate. People are losing cars and houses to financial institutions due to failure to service loans.

Situation

The situation is just sad. The domino effect this will have to the entire economy in the not-so-distant future really doesn’t make for riveting reading. The prevailing bleak economic situation, left unchecked, is going to plunge the country into socio-economic turmoil that has the potential to set us back decades. While it is very convenient now to attribute all our failures to the COVID-19 pandemic, we all know how as a country we were already walking on thin ice way before the pandemic started wreaking havoc on us.

I wonder sometimes how much really, in actuality, our government has contributed from the public kitty towards dealing with the pandemic in the form of personal protective equipment (PPE), beefing up the health sector with much-needed personnel, drugs and medical equipment, food aid, as well as on the vaccine. Over the past year or so, we have seen government receiving donations from other governments, the private sector and philanthropists to do its core business of service delivery, especially in the areas of healthcare and relief efforts.
Can our government boldly tell us that it has used reasonable funds from our taxes to address the nation’s needs in a prudent manner that has benefitted those among us who have been most hard-hit by the pandemic? Is it in a position to state that all the monies that have been made available have addressed the needs of the nation at this very difficult time.

Transparent

What of our decision-making processes? Can we say that these have been transparent, consultative and always in the interests of the people. From where I am sitting as a supposed armchair critic, I think we have hit it at a tangent in many areas and the results are there for everyone to see. Striking a balance between saving lives and keeping the economy afloat was always going to be a vexing exercise and so that we have nobody to blame at the end of the day, our decisions, especially those with a bearing on the economy, had to be informed by extensive consultation and transparency.

Unfortunately, as the evidence seems to suggest, interests our SMME sector, who are supposed to be drivers of the economy and who were already owed billions of Emalangeni by government for goods and services, seemed to take the back seat and the results; many of them going under the hammer and losing properties in dramatic fashion. We hear nothing solid from government, save for a mooted tax benefit as announced by the  previous government, to come to the aid of this crumbling sector, which has a huge potential of changing the kingdom’s economic fortunes around. Not long ago, the prime minister spoke of the need to support this sector and acknowledged the myriad of challenges besetting it.

What continues to seemingly occupy our minds are the never-ending capital projects, benefiting a few elite, that we are so fixated at bankrolling by all means necessary while social spending takes a back seat. Major hotels have been closed, the hospitality industry outlook generally looks bleak, especially owing to the state of the local economy. The monstrous money drain called FISH, which is indeed bleeding billions of taxpayers’ money, is but one of the many examples of government’s imprudence. Government should just concentrate on creating a conducive environment for business to thrive and leave these projects to the private sector as opposed to insisting on being a dominant player. What extents are we really willing to go to syphon emaSwati’s hard-earned money?

We need a real plan from government to resuscitate the economy, with a strong emphasis on the SMME sector beyond the unending rhetoric which is never back up by actions. This sector should be liberalised and incentivised more than what is currently obtaining. I have observed how recently, there is huge investment in real estate, especially shopping complexes. This happens against a backdrop of very low occupancy rates in many of the cities’ structures which speaks of a struggling sector and low buying power among the citizens. Unless we are prepared to deal with the rampant nepotism and cancerous corruption that has been institutionalised in the country, we are going nowhere. Let us also be careful, as well, of the growing clique of business untouchables who are laying their hands on every sector of the economy that appears to be lucrative. The hostile takeovers we are witnessing in the economy do not bode well for our foreign direct investment aspirations.

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