PUBLIC CAN MAKE BUDGET SUBMISSIONS ONLINE

MBABANE – Government has availed its digital platforms for the public to share their submissions on the budget.

This is because government cannot conduct public consultations on the 2024/2025 national budget.  The Minister of Finance, Neal Rijkenberg, who is also the Chairperson of the Planning and Budgeting Committee (PBC), said the budgeting teams would only be able to conduct public consultations of the 2025/2026 national budget. “The Ministry of Finance and the entire PBC, the committee responsible for coordinating the preparation of the national budget, has noted with appreciation, the call for the participation of the public in the preparation of the national budget, known as  ‘taking the budget to the people’ at Sibaya. This is indeed a desirable call and well received by PBC.

“While we appreciate that this is a very important exercise and one that is close to our hearts, it is unfortunate to report that we will not be able to undertake the public consultations before the conclusion of the 2024/25 budget,” he said. The minister said the reason they would be unable to conduct the public consultations was because the year 2023 was an elections year, which had shortened the period over which they normally prepared the budget. He added that the budget calendar had been affected negatively since the budget processes had to be sanctioned by Cabinet and Parliament.

Further, the minister said the need to accommodate other equally important activities such as the induction of the new Members of Parliament (MPs) and Cabinet on some government processes and programmes, including the budget, which tend to encroach into the budget calendar, also limited the budgeting period.Furthermore, the minister mentioned that the that need to engage more extensively with line ministries in ensuring that their budget proposals were aligned with the Sibaya submissions, further reduced the time available for the preparation and conclusion of the budget.

“The need to ensure proper planning and adequate resourcing of the relevant PBC ministries (Finance, Economic Planning and Development as well as Public Service), the Ministry of Tinkhundla Administration and Regional Development, to be able to undertake the public consultations, was also not conducive for the consultations,” he said.

Timelines

The minister said the three PBC ministries, working together with the Ministry of Tinkhundla Administration and Development were, however, working on a programme and corresponding budget to ensure that this exercise was conducted at a time to be announced later in 2024 to inform the preparation of the budget for the financial year 2025/2026. The minister said the public would be informed in due course of the proposed timelines and logistical arrangements for conducting the physical public engagements later this year, as soon as all the planning had been finalised. He urged the public to exercise patience, cooperation and understanding. He stated, however, that even as the nation awaited the physical engagements, the public was invited to take advantage of government‘s digital platforms to share their contributions towards the preparation of the 2024/2025 national budget. The platforms include Eswatini Government and Ministry of Finance Facebook pages, Government website: https://www.gov.sz and PBC Email Address: info@pbceswatini.net

The minister said he did not want to create false hope by stating that the submissions that would be made through these platforms would all be incorporated into the budget. He said they would assist the PBC to prepare the budget with a picture of what the people were expecting. “I don’t want to make promises and say whatever is raised will be put in the budget. It is just good that while we are taking the budget together to know what people are saying is important in the budget formulating process because of constraints, but it would be lovely to see as we are formulating the budget we know where the demand lies with the people,” he said.

Given the limited period of the budget and the submissions that were made during Sibaya, the minister said there were temptations to rush the public consultations. “We could have rushed it, at some point, there was an attempt to bring bucopho together and hear from them but it really would have been a cosmetic exercise. If you want to do a real exercise, one does need to get time such as getting notice from whomever we are going to engage with at the tinkhundla centres be it bucopho or any structures. When you look at when Sibaya was held and when the budget process was announced, there was too little time for the consultations. We opted to do it properly. In terms of getting to grassroots level, we need to start early in the budget cycle of 2025/2026 and we need to start in 2024,” he said.

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