BRING TO LIFE GRAND PLAN – ECONOMIST

MBABANE – Economist Thembinkosi Dube has okayed the five salient points of the 2024/2025 National Budget and say what remains, is to bring to life the grand plan.

The budget speech was delivered by the Minister of Finance, Neal Rijkenberg, on Monday in Parliament. Dube said the overall outlook of the E29.42 billion ‘Nkwe for growth’ addressed the needs of emaSwati and properly outlined government’s responsibilities. He said it addressed what the people called for during Sibaya, but what was left for government was to bring to life the grand plan. The crucial areas of the budget were to grow the economy and create jobs. Eswatini has an overall 33 per cent unemployment rate, which translates to 246 153 people in the working class segment. The figures were derived from the latest population report, which highlighted that the country had a population of slightly over 1.2 million people.

According to labour laws, the country’s eligible age to be admitted to work is 15 to 64, even though the official retirement age is 60 years. The population report shows that in 2023, the 15 to 64 age group accounted for 61.6 per cent of the entire population, which is 739 400 and 33 per cent of that population. Dube said the budget was on point in the reduction of corporate tax from 27 per cent to 25 per cent. The two per cent reduction will be implemented on July 1, 2024. Dube noted that there were questions about why government opted for a reduction in corporate tax, while pay-as-you-earn (PAYE) remained at a maximum of 33 per cent. The economist said he was from a school of thought that said if corporate tax was reduced, companies would grow in terms of expanding their operations and hiring more people, thus reducing the unemployment rate.

Salary

He further, explained that companies would be able to implement salary increments as well as cushion their employees through cost-of-living adjustments (CoLA). He also lauded the E250 million increase in the health budget, which made 10.2 per cent of the national budget. The Ministry of Health was allocated E3 billion from E2.75 billion in the 2023/2024 financial year. Dube added that the E5 billion allocation to education was also a good move. He, however, decried that government was not investing in research. He noted that there were a number of scholarships, but none of them were on research for PHD scholars. “If government can avail at least E5 million for Doctor of Philosophy (Phd) scholarships, it might use those research papers and boost the economy and government would not need to hire consultants,” he said.

He, however, raised concerns about government’s areas of investments in this ministry, saying there was too much focus on crops. “Eswatini imports around one million litres of milk monthly from South Africa,” he said. Dube said government needed to up its game in the local dairy production. He also applauded government for the continuity in supporting the Youth Revolving Fund and the Rural Development Fund (RDF) though the success rate of these projects was questionable.

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