Swazi Observer

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NEAL TABLES SIBAYA-INSPIRED E29.42BN BUDGET

By KWANELE DHLADHLA and PHEPHILE MOTAU | 2024-02-27

Minister of Finance, Neal Rijkenberg, has a delivered a record-breaking budget for the 2024/2025 financial year aimed at mainly addressing poverty and unemployment.

Rijkenberg has not only appropriated a first of its kind total budget of E29.42 billion but has also projected an unprecedented share of SACU receipts at E13.07 billion.

When delivering the first budget speech for the 12th Parliament yesterday, the minister also challenged legislators to do their best to work together towards achieving record growth and make this to be their legacy.

Eswatini Revenue Service (ERS) has also projected record revenue estimates for 2024/2025. To this end, the minister commended ERS for adopting a more client-centric approach in the collection of taxes, and for the record revenue collection.

Taxes on goods and services excluding SACU receipts were expected to increase by 11.5 per cent to E6.57 billion. VAT was expected to grow by 13.4 per cent to E5.09 billion. Fuel taxes were expected to grow by 5.4 per cent, amounting to E1.39 billion. The levy on imported vehicles was projected to grow around 8.3 per cent, from E12 million to E13 million.

Over the past years, the budget has risen from E22.9 billion in 2019/2020 until it peaked at almost E30 billion this year. The budget for the current financial year was E26.4 billion, meaning a growth of E3.02 billion.

Rijkenberg explained that the theme of this year’s budget was ‘Nkwe for growth! To hit the ground running’.

He said the budget was intended at enabling and equipping Eswatini to hit the ground running for economic growth and service delivery.

In line with the National Development Agenda, Rijkenberg pointed out that the 2024/2025 budget was expected to address social challenges, build infrastructure and ultimately provide for economic growth.

“To attain this growth, we will be prioritising the completion of existing capital projects, and spending in excess of E1 billion more on capital infrastructure, compared to the current years’ actual spend,” said Rijkenberg.

He stated that major projects to be completed included the International Confvention Centre (ICC), the Manzini-Mpandze Highway, the Mpandze-Mbadlane Highway, the Nhlangano-Sicunusa road, the Manzini Golf Course interchange, Lower Usuthu Smallholder Irrigation Project (LUSIP phase two), the Biotechnology Park, Buhleni Police Station and the Shiselweni Network Reinforcement projects. The minister mentioned that prioritising the completion of existing projects, should position the country to start seeing economic returns from the operationalisation of these projects, and create space in the capital budget for new projects going forward.

“Two of our most pressing challenges, remain poverty and unemployment. The only real way of sustainably addressing these is by growing the economy, which not only gets more people employed but also creates more opportunities for Emaswati to get better employment. This in turn will lift our people out of poverty. Our SACU receipts are at record highs and we will be spending more this year on infrastructure and service delivery than ever before,” added Rijkenberg.

He said his previous budgets were focused on consolidation and fixing the 0foundations of the economy, and they had made great strides in achieving this.

“Eswatini is now poised for growth, and I believe that the budget I am presenting here today, if well executed and with the support of the nation, can grow our economy considerably,” Rijkenberg said.

The minister said there was no one silver bullet that is going to save the country.

“It is going to require doing many things well: continuing to cut unnecessary and wasteful expenditure, completing all outstanding capital projects, starting new capital projects that will give us good returns, and continuing to make Eswatini the investment destination of choice in the region,” he said.

The minister increased the budget allocations for the ministry of education and the ministry of health, as per the Speech from the Throne and Sibaya submissions.

In line with the theme for the budget, the minister added estimation of gross domestic product (GDP) growth that would be gained through the different priorities.

“When speaking about projects and plans that our government is busy with, I have added possible GDP growth percentages.

“Please understand that these percentages are based on very rough indicative turnovers projected from these projects and could be lower or higher,” he said.

The minister said the country’s current growth was around five per cent but if they uses a conservative three per cent as a baseline and then add the possible growth percentages of the projects that they are doing and planning to do, then one would notice that it is possible for us to reach a growth rate of 10 per cent by the end of the term in 2028.

“We could be the leaders on the continent regarding GDP growth and this in turn would deal with our unemployment and poverty. Let's all do our best to work together to achieve this record growth and have this be the 12th Parliament’s legacy,” he said.

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